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Compliments  of 

CHARLES  FRANCIS  ADAMS, 

84  State  Street,  Boston,  Mass. 


SEWARD 

AND 

THE  DECLARATION  OF  PARIS 


BY 

CHARLES  FRANCIS  ADAMS 


SEWARD 

AND 

THE  DECLARATION  OF  PARIS 

A  Forgotten  Diplomatic  Episode 
APRIL-AUGUST,  1861 


BY 
CHARLES   FRANCIS   ADAMS  ^ 


BOSTON 

I  Q  I  2 


[The  following  paper,  prepared  for  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society,  and  submitted  at  its  October  Meeting,  19 12,  appears  in  the 
printed  Proceedings  of  that  Society,  vol.  xlvi.  pp.  23-81.] 


SEWARD  AND  THE  DECLARATION 
OF  PARIS. 


The  period  between  April  13,  1861^  when  Fort  Sumter  fell, 
and  July  21,  following,  which  witnessed  the  Bull  Run  catas- 
trophe —  a  period  of  exactly  one  hundred  days  —  constituted 
the  first  distinctive  stage  of  our  Civil  War.  Formative,  during 
it  the  loyal  portion  of  the  Union  was,  so  to  speak,  finding  it- 
self. In  an  excited  and  altogether  abnormal  condition  morally, 
it  was  unreasoning,  unreasonable  and  curiously  illogical.  As  an 
interval  of  time,  therefore,  the  period  referred  to  stands  by 
itself,  to  be  treated  separately  from  that  which  preceded  or  that 
which  was  to  follow.  Before  April  13th  and  up  to  that  day  — 
strange  as  the  assertion  now  sounds  —  the  historic  fact  is  that 
the  country,  taken  as  a  whole,  had  no  realizing  sense  of  the  im- 
pending. Though  anxiety  was  great  and  continually  increasing,  it 
was  still  generally  believed  that,  somehow  or  in  some  way,  provi- 
dential if  not  otherwise,  an  actual  appeal  to  arms  and  a  conse- 
quent internecine  struggle  would  not  take  place.  Too  dreadful 
calmly  to  contemplate,  it  could  not,  and  consequently  would  not, 
occur.^  The  firing  on  Fort  Sumter  dispelled  this  illusion,  and  an 
entire  community  at  last  realized  the  grim,  hard  facts  of  a 
situation  truly  appalling.  Then,  so  far  as  the  part  of  the  coun- 
try loyal  to  the  Union  was  concerned,  there  ensued  the  hundred 
days  referred  to,  —  days  of  artificial  excitement  and  self- 
delusion.  Fired  by  patriotism  and  hterally  drunk  with  enthu- 
siasm, the  North  indulged  in  a  most  exaggerated  self-confidence, 
combined  with  an  altogether  undue  depreciation  of  its  opponent. 

^  "Neither  party  appeared  to  be  apprehensive  of  or  to  realize  the  gathering 
storm.  There  was  a  general  belief,  indulged  in  by  most  persons,  that  an  adjust- 
ment would  in  some  way  be  brought  about,  without  any  extensive  resort  to  ex- 
treme measures.  .  .  .  Until  blood  was  spiUed  there  was  hope  of  conciliation." 
Welles,  Diary,  i.  10,  12,  35,  172,  355-356. 


257172 


The  conflict  was  to  be  short,  sharp  and  decisive.  A  military 
walk-over  was  confidently  anticipated;  the  so-called  Confed- 
eracy was  to  be  obliterated  by  one  wild  rush.  The  cry  of  "On 
to  Richmond,"  first  raised  by  Horace  Greeley  in  the  New  York 
Tribune,  soon  became  general  and  irresistible.  But  the  delu- 
sion was  not  confined  to  the  unthinking  or  less  well-informed. 
Shared  to  an  almost  equal  extent  by  those  in  official  position,  it 
was  reflected  in  their  attitude  and  stands  recorded  in  their 
utterances.  This  was  pecuharly  apparent  in  the  management 
of  our  foreign  relations  through  the  State  Department,  of  which 
Mr.  Seward  was  the  head.  The  awakening  —  and  it  was  a 
terribly  rude  one  —  came  on  the  21st  of  July,  at  Bull  Run; 
and  from  that  day  the  struggle  entered  on  a  wholly  new  phase. 
The  community,  at  first  panic-stricken,  then  soon  sobered.  The 
strength  and  fighting  capacity  of  the  Confederacy  had  been 
unmistakably  demonstrated;  and,  the  first  artificial  flush  of 
enthusiasm  dispelled,  the  country  addressed  itself  in  a  wholly 
new  spirit  to  the  supreme  effort  to  which  it  at  last  realized  it 
was  summoned.  The  magnitude  and  consequent  uncertainty 
of  the  struggle  were  reahzed. 

In  the  course  of  a  somewhat  elaborate  historical  study  my 
attention  has  recently  been  drawn  to  an  altogether  forgotten 
diplomatic  episode  which  occurred  in  that  stage  of  initial 
crystallization,  and  to  it  I  propose  to  devote  this  paper.  As 
an  incident  in  a  most  critical  period,  what  I  have  to  describe 
will,  I  think,  prove  not  without  interest;  and,  at  the  time,  it 
was,  as  I  now  view  it,  of  a  possible  importance  appreciated 
neither  then  nor  since. 

I  recently  received  a  letter  from  our  associate,  Mr.  Frederic 
Bancroft,  author  of  the  Life  of  Seward,  in  which,  referring 
to  an  allusion  of  mine,  he  said:  "Unless  you  have  taken  stand 
directly  against  your  father  and  your  brother  Henry's  essay 
in  regard  to  Seward's  and  your  father's  attitude  toward  the 
attempted  accession  of  the  United  States,  in  1861,  to  the  dec- 
laration of  Pans  of  1856,  I  very  much  wish  to  argue  the  point 
with  you,  orally,  of  course." 

The  allusion  recalled  the  fact,  which  I  had  quite  forgotten, 
that  Mr.  Henry  Adams  had  prepared  such  a  paper  as  Mr.  Ban- 
croft referred  to,^  and,  moreover,  that  I  had  myself  nearly 

^  Historical  Essays,  237-289. 


twenty  years  ago  made  large  use  of  it  in  writing  chapter  xii 
entitled  "The  Treaty  of  Paris,"  in  the  Life  ofC.  F.  Adams,  in 
the  American  Statesman  Series.  Mr.  Bancroft  had  subsequently 
gone  over  the  same  ground,  but  I  could  not  recall  the  conclu- 
sions he  had  reached.  In  fact,  the  whole  subject  had  passed 
completely  out  of  my  memory.  I  accordingly  once  more  reverted 
to  it,  carefully  re-reading  Mr.  Henry  Adams's  paper,  the  chap- 
ter (xxxi)  relating  to  the  episode  in  Mr.  Bancroft's  Seward, 
and  finally  my  own  effort  of  a  score  of  years  since.  The 
general  historians  had  not  apparently  deemed  the  incident 
worthy  even  of  passing  notice.  In  this,  as  will  presently  be 
seen,  I  do  not  concur. 

As  usual,  the  more  thoroughly  I  now  studied  the  records, 
the  more  important,  involved,  and  suggestive  the  episode  be- 
came. Above  all,  I  was  amazed  and  mortified  at  the  superfi- 
cial character  of  my  own  previous  treatment;  for  I  now  found 
myself  compelled  to  most  unwelcome  conclusions,  not  only 
different  from  those  I  had  previously  set  forth,  but  altogether 
at  variance  with  those  reached  by  Mr.  Henry  Adams  in  his 
carefully  prepared  study.  Though  peculiarly  well-informed  as 
to  the  facts,  having  himself  been  practically  at  the  time  con- 
cerned in  what  occurred,  I  now  found  reason  to  conclude  he 
had  written  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  active  and  interested 
participant;  and  since  he  published  his  paper  fresh  material 
had  come  to  light.  I  so  wrote  at  much  length  to  Mr.  Bancroft, 
with  whose  subsequently  prepared  narrative  and  conclusions  I 
now  find  myself  in  more  general,  though  not  in  complete, 
accord.  That  letter  to  Mr.  Bancroft  supplies  the  basis  of  what 
I  here  submit.  In  submitting  it,  however,  I  wish  to  premise 
that  in  it  no  regard  has  been  paid  to  the  literary  aspect,  nor 
can  it  even  be  considered  a  finished  historical  study.  Rather 
in  the  nature  of  a  compendium  or  syllabus,  into  it  I  have 
put  a  mass  of  somewhat  heterogeneous  matter  with  a  view 
to  making  the  same  more  accessible  in  future  to  myself,  as 
well  as  other  investigators  of  a  highly  interesting  historical 
period.  I  regard  the  result,  therefore,  largely  as  raw  material, 
in  the  accumulation  and  presenting  of  which  I  have  to  ac- 
knowledge much  and  efficient  assistance  received  from  our 
Editor. 

For  dn  intelligent  comprehension  of  what  is  to  follow  in  its 


far-reaching  significance  and  somewhat  dramatic  interest, 
it  is,  however,  necessary  to  go  pretty  far  back,  —  so  to  speak, 
to  begin  at  the  beginning.  Attention  has  already  been  called 
to  the  date  of  the  bombardment  and  fall  of  Fort  Sumter, — 
April  13,  1861.  Events  then  followed  rapidly.  Sumter  was 
surrendered  on  Saturday,  and  the  papers  of  the  following 
Monday  the  15th,  contained  the  proclamation  of  the  Presi- 
dent calling  for  troops,  and  summoning  Congress  to  meet  July 
4th  in  extra  session.-^  Two  days  later,  the  17th,  Jefferson  Davis 
responded  from  Montgomery  by  declaring  the  intention  of  the 
Confederacy  immediately  to  issue  letters  of  marque,  authorizing 
depredations  by  privateers  on  the  ships  and  commerce  of  the 
loyal  States.^  On  the  19th,  the  Friday  of  the  week  following  the 
fall  of  Sumter,  President  Lincoln  issued  yet  another  proclama- 
tion annoimcing  a  blockade  of  the  ports  of  all  the  seceding  States. 
In  this  proclamation  it  was  stated  that  the  blockade  was  to  be 
conducted  "  in  pursuance  of  the  laws  of  the  United  States  and 
of  the  law  of  nations  in  such  case  provided";  and,  finally,  to 
meet  the  threatened  retaUation  through  privateers  and  pri- 
vateering, it  was  added  "that  if  any  person  under  the  pretended 
authority  of  such  [Confederate]  States  .  .  .  shall  molest  a  ves- 
sel of  the  United  States,  or  the  persons  or  cargo  on  board  of  her, 
such  person  will  be  held  amenable  to  the  laws  of  the  United 
States  for  the  prevention  and  punishment  of  piracy."  ^  Two 
international  issues  were  thus  presented  and  brought  to  the  front 
within  the  first  week  following  the  fall  of  Sumter.  They  were 
the  issues  of  belHgerency  in  case  of  a  blockade  of  the  first  mag- 
nitude, proclaimed  to  be  enforced  "in  pursuance  of  the  law  of 
nations,"  and  the  logically  consequent  issue  naturally  involved 
in  what  is  known  as  privateering.  Five  days  later,  on  April 
24th,  a  circular  addressed  to  the  representatives  of  the  United 
States  in  aU  the  principal  capitals,  was  issued  from  the  State 
Department  calling  attention  to  the  attitude  now  proposed  to 
be  assumed  by  the  United  States  towards  what  was  known  as 
the  Declaration  of  Paris. 

This  so-called  Declaration  was  an  outcome  of  the  Crimean 
War.    When,  in  the  summer  of  1853,  that  war  broke  out,  nearly 

^  Messages  and  Papers  of  the  Presidents,  vi.  13. 

*  Messages  and  Papers  of  the  Confederacy,  I.  60. 

•  Messages  and  Papers  of  the  Presidents,  vi.  14. 


forty  years  had  elapsed  since  the  close  of  the  Napoleonic  period: 
a  period  during  which,  as  is  well  known,  a  system  of  semi-bar- 
barous rules  of  so-called  international  law  had  been  ruthlessly 
enforced  by  all  beUigerents.  In  1853  those  rules  were  still 
recognized  as  obligatory  and  enforceable,  though  in  abeyance. 
As  an  historical  fact,  it  was  undeniable  that,  on  the  high  seas, 
piracy  was  the  natural  condition  of  mah;  and,  when  the  arti- 
ficial state  of  peace  ceased,  into  that  condition  as  between  those 
involved  in  the  strife  nations  relapsed.  To  ameliorate  this  state 
of  affairs,  both  possible  and  imminent,  and  to  readjust  in  some 
degree  the  rules  of  international  law  to  meet  changed  commer- 
cial conditions,  Great  Britain  and  France,  on  the  outbreak  of 
the  war  with  Russia,  agreed  to  respect  neutral  commerce, 
whether  under  their  own  flags  or  that  of  Russia;  and,  at  the 
close  of  the  war,  the  Congress  of  Paris  adopted,'  in  April,  1856,  a 
Declaration  embracing  four  heads: 

1.  Privateering  is  and  remains  abolished. 

2.  The  neutral  flag  covers  enemy's  goods,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  contraband  of  war. 

3.  Neutral  goods,  with  the  exception  of  contraband  of 
war,  are  not  liable  to  capture  under  enemy's  flag. 

4.  Blockades  in  order  to  be  binding  must  be  effective; 
that  is  to  say,  maintained  by  forces  sufficient  really  to  pre- 
vent access  to  the  coast  of  the  enemy. 

Great  Britain,  France,  Prussia,  Russia,  Austria  and  Turkey 
adopted  this  mutual  agreement,  and  pledged  themselves  to 
make  it  known  to  States  not  represented  in  the  Congress,  and 
invite  their  accession  to  it,  on  two  conditions:  (i)  That 
the  Declaration  should  be  accepted  as  a  whole,  or  not  at 
all;  and  (2)  That  the 'States  acceding  should  enter  into  no 
subsequent  arrangement  on  maritime  law  in  time  of  war 
without  stipulating  for  a  strict  observance  of  the  four  points. 
On  these  conditions  every  maritime  power  was  to  be  invited 
to  accede,  and  had  the  right  to  become  a  party  to  the  agree- 
ment. Accordingly  nearly  all  the  nations  of  Europe  and 
South  America  in  course  of  time  notified  their  accession, 
and  became,  equally  with  the  original  parties  contracting,  en- 
titled to  all  the  benefits  and  subject  to  the  obligations  of  the 
compact. 

Among  the  rest,  the  government  of  the  United  States  was 


8 

invited  to  accede,  and,  like  the  other  powers,  had  the  right 
so  to  do  by  simple  notification.  This  was  during  the  Pierce 
administration;  and  Mr.  Marcy,  then  Secretary  of  State,  in 
due  time  (July  28,  1856)  informed  the  governments  interested 
that  the  President  could  not  abandon  the  right  to  have  recourse 
to  privateers,  unless  he  could  secure  the  exemption  of  all  pri- 
vate property,  not  contraband,  from  capture  at  sea;  ^  with 
that  amendment  the  United  States  would  become  a  party  to 
the  Declaration. 

In  other  words,  in  addition  to  the  points  agreed  on  at  Paris 
the  United  States  contended  for  the  estabHshment  of  the  same 
principle  on  the  sea  that  obtained  on  land,  to  wit:  the  exemp- 
tion from  capture  or  unnecessary  molestation  of  all  private 
property,  not  contraband  of  war,  including  ships.  The  last 
great  vestige  of  the  earlier  times  of  normal  piracy  was,  by  gen- 
eral consent,  to  be  relegated  to  the  past.  With  the  exception 
of  Great  Britain,  the  more  considerable  European  maritime 
powers  made  no  objection  to  the  Marcy  amendment.  For 
obvious  reasons  connected  with  her  past  history  and  naval 
preponderance.  Great  Britain  was  understood  to  oppose  it. 

President  Buchanan's  was  essentially  an  "Ostend  mani- 
festo," or  fiHbuster,  administration.  As  such,  it  felt  no  call 
to  the  proposed  modifications;  ^   but  when  Lincoln  succeeded 

^  [This  policy  goes  back  to  1823,  when  President  Monroe  recommended  it  in 
his  message  of  1823.  "I  trust  you  will  not  take,  as  I  am  told  some  legislative 
statesmen  have  done,  the  proposition  mentioned  in  the  message  for  abolishing 
private  war  upon  the  sea  to  be  a  mere  offer  to  abolish  privateering.  You  will 
understand  it  as  it  is  meant,  a  project  for  the  universal  exemption  of  private 
property  upon  the  ocean  from  depredation  by  war."  John  Quincy  Adams  to 
Robert  Walsh,  December  3,  1823.  Ed.] 

2  [The  following  has  an  historical  interest  in  this  connection.  September  5, 
1861,  Richard  Cobden  wrote  to  James  Buchanan  saying:  "The  subject  of  the 
blockade  is  becoming  more  and  more  serious.  I  am  afraid  we  have  ourselves  to 
blame  for  not  having  placed  the  question  of  belligerent  rights  on  a  better  footing." 
He  then  asked  a  question  about  the  attitude  of  the  United  States  towards  the 
Declaration  of  Paris.  Buchanan  repUed,  December  14,  1861:  "In  reference  to 
your  question  in  regard  to  blockade,  no  administration  within  the  last  half-cen- 
tury, up  to  the  end  of  my  term,  would  have  consented  to  a  general  declaration 
abohshing  privateering.  Our  most  effectual  means  of  annoying  a  great  naval 
power  upon  the  ocean  is  by  granting  letters  of  marque  and  reprisal.  We  could  not 
possibly,  therefore,  have  consented  to  the  Paris  declaration  which  would  have  left 
the  vessels  (for  example  of  Great  Britain  or  France)  free  to  capture  our  merchant 
vessels,  whilst  we  should  have  deprived  oiurselves  of  the  employment  of  the  force 
which  had  proved  so  powerful  in  capturing  their  merchant  vessels.  Hence  the 
proposition  of  Mr.  Marcy  to  abolish  war  upon  private  property  altogether  on 


Buchanan  the  aspect  of  the  proposition  had,  from  the  United 
States  point  of  view,  undergone  dramatic  change.  Threatened 
with  Confederate  letters  of  marque,  the  government  also  found 
itself  engaged  in,  and  responsible  for,  a  blockade  of  the  first 
magnitude.  Under  such  circumstances,  it  was  plainly  impossible 
to  forecast  all  contingencies,  and  it  was  very  open  to  question 
what  policy  might  in  certain  exigencies  prove  the  more  ex- 
pedient; but,  on  the  whole,  it  seemed  to  the  administration 
wisest  to  endeavor  to  conciliate  Europe. 

The  question  immediately  arises,  What  was  intended  by  the 
word  "privateering"  as  used  in  the  Declaration?  On  that 
would  seem,  in  the  present  case,  to  have  depended  the  attitude 
of  the  Diplomat  at  the  time  and  the  conclusions  of  the  His- 
torian since ;  for  on  this  point  strange  confusion  runs  through  all 
the  correspondence,  memoirs  and  records.  Nor  is  this  con- 
fusion peculiar  to  our  Civil  War  state  papers  and  Kterature. 
It  is,  on  the  contrary,  very  noticeable  in  the  writings  con- 
nected with  our  anterior  wars,  both  that  of  Independence  and 
that  of  1812-1815.  In  the  earlier  cases  it  clearly  existed  in  the 
minds  of  those  engaged  in  the  discussion.  In  the  case,  how- 
ever, of  the  Civil  War,  the  confusion  was  apparently  due  in 
quite  as  great  a  degree  to  a  desire  to  ignore  and  confound 
manifest  and  well-recognized  distinctions  as  to  any  real  lack 
of  a  correct  understanding  of  terms. 

Up  to  the  middle  of  the  last  (nineteenth)  century,  there  were 
various  recognized  forms  of  ocean  depredation.^  Enumer- 
ating these  in  order,  they  were  carried  on 

1.  By  pirates,  so  called,  through  what  was  known  as  "pi- 
racy."   A  familiar  term,  this  calls  for  no  definition. 

2.  By  what  were  known  as  "corsairs." 

3.  By  privateers,  sailing  in  time  of  war  under  letters  of 
marque  issued  by  a  belHgerent. 

4.  By  regularly  commissioned  ships  of  war,  belonging  to  a 
recognized  belligerent,  under  whose  flag  they  sailed. 

the  ocean,  as  modern  civilization  had  abolished  it  on  the  land."  Works  of  James 
Buchanan  (Moore),  xi,  218,  234.    Ed.] 

^  Throughout  the  preparation  of  this  paper  constant  use  has  been  made  of 
Prof.  J.  Bassett  Moore's  invaluable  Digest  of  International  Law  (1906),  and  es- 
pecially of  the  collection  of  authorities  and  material  under  the  two  heads  of 
Privateers  and  the  Declaration  of  Paris,  vii.  535-583,  sees.  1215-1221.  Only 
in  exceptional  cases,  therefore,  is  special  reference  made  to  this  compendium. 


10 

There  has  more  recently  come  into  existence  a  class  of  vessels 
known  as  "commerce  destroyers,"  constructed  not  for  combat 
primarily,  but  for  the  purpose  of  inflicting  injury  on  the  com- 
mercial marine  of  a  hostile  power  with  which  the  beUigerent 
owning  the  "commerce  destroyer"  is  at  war.  The  term,  how- 
ever, refers  only  to  a  type  of  naval  construction.  It  in  no  way 
affects  legal  classification.  The  "commerce  destroyer"  is 
simply  a  pubHc  cruiser  adapted  to  a  specific  purpose. 

On  these  distinctions  the  whole  issue  depends.  In  the  minds, 
however,  of  those  who  carried  on  the  negotiation  of  1861,  the 
distinctions  do  not  seem  to  have  been  clear;  and  the  failure 
then  to  observe,  or  the  endeavor  to  ignore  and  obscure  them, 
complicated  the  whole  diplomatic  situation,  and  at  more  than 
one  juncture  gravely  threatened  our  foreign  relations. 

The  ownership  of  the  vessel  sailing  under  a  letter  of  marque 
was,  then,  of  the  very  essence  of  privateering.  This,  in  1861, 
established  the  distinguishing  Hne;  and  so  lay  at  the  basis  of 
Article  I  of  the  Declaration.  The  privateer  thus  held,  so  to 
speak,  a  betwixt-and-between  position;  a  privately  owned 
maritime  adventure,  its  letter  of  marque,  issued  by  a  belliger- 
ent, gave  it  a  legal  status.  But  for  that  it  would  have  been 
subject  to  treatment  as  a  pirate.  The  distinction  is,  too,  espe- 
cially important  to  be  borne  in  mind  while  discussing  the  prob- 
lems which  developed  from  the  maritime  operations  conducted 
during  the  Civil  War,  inasmuch  as  the  value  of  the  privateer, 
and  the  inducement  to  "privateering,"  then  depended  on  suc- 
cess in  the  capture  of  prizes;  which  prizes,  when  duly  con- 
demned, were  to  be  the  plunder,  or  property,  of  the  individual 
owner  of  the  privateer.  They  did  not,  nor  do  they  belong 
to  the  Government  that  issued  the  letters  of  marque  under 
which  the  privateer  sails.  An  individual  venture,  those  con- 
cerned in  the  privateer  were  to  a  degree  irresponsible.  The 
point  was  very  elaborately  discussed  later  in  the  War,  by 
Secretary  Welles,  in  a  series  of  letters  addressed  to  Secretary 
Seward,  when  it  was  proposed  to  issue  letters  of  marque  to 
Union  adventurers  supposed  to  be  anxious  to  chase  the  Con- 
federate cruisers.^ 

The  preservation  of  the  prize,  with  a  view  to  its, condemna- 
tion as  such,  is,  therefore,  the  great  and  essential  inducement 

1  Welles,  Lincoln  and  Seward,  145-173;  Diary,  i.  246-262. 


II 

to  privateering.  From  niere  commerce  destruction  the  priva- 
teer gets  no  advantage.  This  it  was,  combined  with  the  absence 
of  any  open  port  where  condemnation  proceedings  were  pos- 
sible, which  ahnost  at  once  put  an  end  to  the  whole  scheme  of 
Confederate  privateering.  The  obvious  fact  that  it  must  so  do 
was  pointed  out  and  emphasized  by  the  first  Confederate  Com- 
missioners —  Yancey,  Rost  and  Mann  —  as  early  as  August 
14,  1 86 1,  in  their  elaborate  communication  to  Earl  Russell  of 
that  date.  That  Great  Britain  and  France  had  closed  their 
ports  to  prizes  of  Confederate  privateers  sailing  under  letters 
of  marque,  was  in  the  following  terms  then  made  subject  of 
grave  remark  and  implied  remonstrance: 

The  undersigned,  however,  received  with  some  surprise  and  re- 
gret, the  avowal  of  Her  Britannic  Majesty's  Government  that  in 
order  to  the  observance  of  a  strict  neutrality,  the  public  and  private 
armed  vessels  of  neither  of  the  contending  parties  would  be  permitted 
to  enter  Her  Majesty's  ports  with  prizes.  The  undersigned  do  not 
contest  the  right  of  the  British  Government  to  make  such  regula- 
tions, but  have  been  disposed  to  think  that  it  has  been  unusual  for 
Her  Majesty's  Government  to  exercise  such  right,  and  that  in  this 
instance  the  practical  operation  of  the  rule  has  been  to  favor  the 
Government;  at  Washington,  and  to  cripple  the  exercise  of  an  im- 
doubted  public  right  of  the  Government  of  the  Confederate  States. 
This  Government  commenced  its  career  entirely  without  a  navy. 
Owing  to  the  high  sense  of  duty  which  distinguished  the  Southern 
Oflficers,  who  were  lately  in  commission  in  the  United  States  Navy, 
the  ships  which,  otherwise,  might  have  been  brought  into  Southern 
ports,  were  honorably  delivered  up  to  the  United  States  Government, 
and  the  Navy,  built  for  the  protection  of  the  people  of  all  the  States, 
is  now  used  by  the  Government  at  Washington  to  coerce  the  people 
and  blockade  the  ports  of  one-third  of  the  States  of  the  late  Union. 
The  people  of  the  Confederate  States  are  an  agricultural  and  not  a 
manufacturing  or  commercial  people.  They  own  but  few  ships. 
Hence  there  has  not  been  the  least  necessity  for  the  Government  at 
Washington  to  issue  letters  of  marque.  The  people  of  the  Confed- 
erate States  have  but  few  ships  and  not  much  commerce  upon  which 
such  private  armed  vessels  could  operate.  The  commodities  pro- 
duced in  the  Confederate  States  are  such  as  the  world  needs  more 
than  any  other,  and  the  nations  of  the  Earth  have  heretofore  sent 
their  ships  to  our  wharves,  and  there  the  merchants  buy  and  receive 
our  cotton  and  tobacco.    But  it  is  far  otherwise  with  the  people  of 


12 

the  present  United  States.  They  are  a  manufacturing  and  commer- 
cial people.  They  do  a  large  part  of  the  carrying  trade  of  the  world. 
Their  ships  and  commerce  afford  them  the  sinews  of  war,  and  keep 
their  industry  afloat.  To  cripple  their  industry  and  commerce;  to 
destroy  their  ships  or  cause  them  to  be  dismantled  and  tied  up  to 
their  rotting  wharves,  are  legitimate  objects  and  means  of  warfare. 
Having  no  navy,  no  commercial  marine,  out  of  which  to  improvise 
pubUc  armed  vessels  to  any  considerable  extent,  the  Confederate 
States  were  compelled  to  resort  to  the  issuance  of  letters  of  marque, 
a  mode  of  warfare  as  fully  and  as  clearly  recognized  by  the  law  and 
usage  of  nations,  as  any  other  arm  of  war;  and  most  assuredly  more 
humane  and  more  civilized  in  its  practice  than  that  which  appears 
to  have  distinguished  the  march  of  the  troops  of  the  Government 
of  the  United  States  upon  the  soil  and  among  the  villages  of  Vir- 
ginia. These  facts  tend  to  show  that  the  practical  working  of  the 
rule  that  forbids  the  entry  of  the  pubhc  and  private  armed  vessels 
of  either  party  into  British  ports  with  prizes,  operates  exclusively  to 
prevent  the  exercise  of  this  legitimate  mode  of  warfare  by  the  Con- 
federate States,  while  it  is  to  a  great  degree  a  practical  protection 
to  the  commerce  and  ships  of  the  United  States. 

So  much  for  privateers  and  privateering.  A  pirate,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  a  common  enemy  of  mankind.  He  sails  under 
no  flag,  and  is  responsible  to  no  Government.  A  robber  on  the 
high  seas,  he  is  simply  an  outlaw.^ 

The  public  announcement,  immediately  after  the  firing  on 
Sumter,  that  the  Confederacy  proposed  to  issue  letters  of 
marque  naturally  caused  great  alarm  to  the  Union  authorities, 
and  the  ship-owners  of  the  loyal  States.  Under  the  conditions 
prevailing  in  April,  May  and  June,  1861,  it  well  might.  W.  H. 
Russell  in  his  Diary  gives  a  lively  and  picturesque  account  of 
the  state  of  Jeeling  then  existing  at  Montgomery  and  of  the 

^  Almost  every  known  term  of  opprobrium  can  be  found  in  the  Civil  War 
literature,  official  and  private,  applied  to  vessels  sailing  under  the  flag  of  the 
Confederacy.  They  are  thus  not  infrequently  designated  "  corsairs."  This 
again  was  a  misuse  of  terms;  for,  while  a  "  corsair "  is,  strictly  speaking, 
a  "  pirate,"  the  word  in  general  acceptance  signifies  a  description  of  piratical 
craft  long  since  passed  out  of  existence.  The  corsair  is  especially  associated  with 
the  Barbary  Powers,  so  called,  and  preyed  upon  foreign  commerce  not  protected 
by  those  powers;  but  vessels  known  as  corsairs  were,  as  a  rule,  commissioned 
by  the  Barbary  States,  and  sailed  under  their  flags.  They  in  a  way  constituted 
a  navy.  The  corsair  passed  out  of  existence  about  1816  with  the  decay  in  power 
of  the  Barbary  States.  The  pirate  was  simply  exterminated,  like  other  out- 
laws, robbers  and  free-booters. 


13 

views,  knowledge  and  intentions  of  the  Confederate  authori- 
ties as  respects  letters  of  marque.  What  he  then  wrote  did  not 
at  the  time  appear  in  his  letters  pubHshed  in  the  Times;  and 
that  for  obvious  reasons.  A  neutral  and  a  newspaper  corre- 
spondent, he  was  under  a  well-understood  obligation  to  disclose 
nothing,  not  already  public,  which  would  give  information  or 
contribute  aid  to  the  other  party  to  the  conflict.  So  in  the 
London  Times  of  May  30th,  what  is  now  about  to  be  quoted 
from  the  Diary,  published  eighteen  months  later,  appeared 
only  in  the  following  compressed  and  extremely  non-committal 
form:  "On  leaving  the  Secretary  I  proceeded  to  the  room  of  the 
Attorney- General,  Mr.  Benjarm'n,  a  very  intelligent  and  able 
man,  whom  I  found  busied  in  preparations  connected  with  the 
issue  of  letters  of  marque.  Everything  in  the  office  looked  like 
earnest  work  and  business." 

Dates  are  here  important  as  bearing  on  the  conditions  then 
prevaihng,  and  the  consequent  state  of  mind  and  feehng  of 
those  upon  whom  rested  the  responsibiHty  for  action.  The 
brief  extract  just  quoted  appeared,  it  will  be  noticed,  in  the 
issue  of  the  London  Times  of  May  30th.  On  the  6th  and  9th  of 
the  same  month  Russell  was  making  in  his  Diary  the  following 
more  detailed  record:    • 

Mr.  Benjamin  [then  acting  as  Attorney-General  of  the  Confed- 
eracy] is  the  most  open,  frank,  and  cordial  of  the  Confederates 
whom  I  have  yet  met.  In  a  few  seconds  he  was  telling  me  all  about 
the  course  of  Government  with  respect  to  privateers  and  letters  of 
marque  and  reprisal,  in  order  probably  to  ascertain  what  were  our 
views  in  England  on  the  subject.  I  observed  it  was  Hkely  the  North 
would  not  respect  their  flag,  and  would  treat  their  privateers  as 
pirates.  "We  have  an  easy  remedy  for  that.  For  any  man  under 
our  flag  whom  the  authorities  of  the  United  States  dare  to  execute, 
we  shall  hang  two  of  their  people."  "Suppose,  Mr.  Attorney- 
General,  England,  or  any  of  the  great  powers  which  decreed  the 
abolition  of  privateering,  refuses  to  recognize  your  flag?"  "We  in- 
tend to  claim,  and  do  claim,  the  exercise  of  all  the  rights  and  privi- 
leges of  an  independent  sovereign  State,  and  any  attempt  to  refuses 
us  the  full  measure  of  those  rights  would  be  an  act  of  hostility  to  our 
country."  "But  if  England,  for  example,  declared  your  privateers 
were  pirates?"  "As  the  United  States  never  admitted  the  principle 
laid  down  at  the  Congress  of  Paris,  neither  have  the  Confederate 
States.    If  England  thinks  fit  to  declare  privateers  imder  our  flag 


14 

pirates,  it  would  be  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  declaration  of  war 
against  us,  and  we  must  meet  it  as  best  we  can.".  .  .  As  I  was  going 
down  stairs,  Mr.  Browne  called  me  into  his  room.  He  said  that 
the  Attorney-General  and  himself  were  in  a  state  of  perplexity  as 
to  the  form  in  which  letters  of  marque  and  reprisal  should  be  made  out. 
They  had  consulted  all  the  books  they  could  get,  but  found  no  ex- 
amples to  suit  their  case,  and  he  wished  to  know,  as  I  was  a  bar- 
rister, whether  I  could  aid  him.  I  told  him  it  was  not  so  much  my 
regard  to  my  own  position  as  a  neutral,  as  the  vafri  inscitia  juris 
which  prevented  me  throwing  any  light  on  the  subject.  There  are 
not  only  Yankee  ship-owners  but  EngHsh  firms  ready  with  sailors 
and  steamers  for  the  Confederate  Government,  and  the  owner  of 
the  Camilla  might  be  tempted  to  part  with  his  yacht  by  the  offers 
made  to  him.  [Mr.  Browne  had  three  days  before  assured  Lord 
Russell  that]  the  Government  had  already  received  numerous  — 
I  think  he  said  four  hundred  —  letters  from  ship-owners  applying 
for  letters  of  marque  and  reprisal.  Many  of  these  appHcations  were 
from  merchants  in  Boston,  and  other  maritime  cities  in  the  New  Eng- 
land States.^ 

'^  In  studying  the  history  of  what  then  occurred  and  the  con- 
siderations which  influenced  the  policy  and  utterances  of  those 
responsible,  as  were  Davis  and  Seward,  for  the  course  of  events, 
the  foregoing  is  distinctly  illuminating.  It  throws  a  penetrat- 
ing light  on  a  condition  of  affairs  now  wholly  matter  of  the  past, 
but  one  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  if  the  course  pursued  by  those 
public  characters  is  to  be  understood,  much  more  if  an  historic 
justice  is  to  be  meted  out  to  them.  The  essential  fact  is,  and 
it  is  apparent  from  the  foregoing  extract,  that  in  May,  1861, 
Judah  P.  Benjamin  on  the  one  side,  and  W.  H.  Seward  on  the 
other,  took  up  a  line  of  policy  exactly  where  it  had  been  dropped 
on  the  conclusion  of  the  treaty  of  Ghent,  in  December,  18 14. 
Confronted  by  a  new  and  qmte  unforeseen  situation,  they  in- 
sensibly reverted  to  the  state  of  affairs  which  had  existed  half 
a  century  before,  and  the  methods  adopted  in  dealing  with  it. 
They  failed,  and  most  naturally  failed,  to  grasp  the  fact  that 
nearly  every  condition  had  changed;  and,  consequently,  they 
had  to  grope  their  way  somewhat  blindly  and  altogether  tenta- 
tively to  a  reaKzing  sense  of  this  fact.  During  the  intervening 
half -century  steam  had  supplanted  wind  as  the  essential  factor 
in  naval  operations;  and  this  fact,  under  the  international  con- 

*  Russell,  My  Diary,  North  and  South,  chapters  xxn-xxm. 


IS 

ditions  which  prevailed  throughout  our  Civil  War,  set  at  naught 
all  the  hopes  and  anticipations  of  Mr.  Benjamin,  and,  had  he 
from  the  first  fully  realized  what  it  implied,  would  have  justi- 
fied Mr.  Seward  in  dismissing  his  apprehensions,  so  far  as  injury 
from  privateers  was  concerned.  In  other  words,  what  Benjamin 
hoped  for  and  Seward  feared  was  the  fitting  out  at  individual 
cost  in  Confederate  and  neutral  ports  of  a  swarm  of  cruisers  who 
would  in  view  of  the  illicit  profits  to  be  derived  therefrom  prey 
on  American  commerce,  repeating  the  experience  of  the  wars 
anterior  to  1815.  It  was  this  class  of  venture  to  whiah  the  first 
article  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris  was  meant  to  apply,  —  the 
fitting  out  and  maintenance  on  the  sea  of  privately  owned 
cruisers  sailing  under  letters  of  marque.  It  in  no  way  applied 
to  vessels,  whether  commerce  destroyers  or  others,  built, 
equipped,  armed  and  commissioned  by  a  recognized  belligerent. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  therefore,  and  under  the  international  con; 
ditions  maintained  throughout  our  Civil  War,  the  provision, 
of  the  Declaration  of  Paris  inhibiting  privateering,  had  it  been 
in  force,  would  have  proved  inoperative;  and  it  would  have 
proved  inoperative  simply  because,  contrary  to  the  hopes  and 
expectations  of  Mr.  Benjamin  on  the  one  side,  and  the  fears 
and  apprehensions  of  Mr.  Seward  on  the  other,  privateering, 
within  the  meaning  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris,  cut  no  figure.' 
Why  it  thus  cut  no  figure  is  obvious.  The  British  and 
French  proclamations  of  belHgerency,  and  consequent  neutrality, 
of  May  13  and  June  10,  1861,  solved  the  difficulty  and,  though 
undesignedly,  solved  it  under  the  altogether  novel  maritime 
conditions  then  existing  in  favor  of  the  United  States.  Priva- 
teers sailing  under  letters  of  marque  could  then  by  the  old  and 
established  maritime  usage  be  fitted  out  in  either  neutral  or 
Confederate  ports,  sailing  therefrom.  As  matter  of  fact,  how- 
ever, both  were  practically  closed.  The  last,  the  Confederate 
ports,  were  closed  by  a  blockade,  made  possible  by  steam,  to 
either  the  egress  of  armed  vessels,  whether  public  or  private, 
or  the  ingress  of  such  vessels,  or  any  prizes  that  might 
be  captured  by  them.  So  long,  therefore,  as  the  blockade 
could  be  effectively  maintained,  or,  iii  other  words,  so  long  as 
the  European  naval  powers  did  not  actively  intervene  to  put 
an  end  to  the  ocean  mastery  of  the  Union,  that  source  of  danger 
was  sealed  up.    Practically,  also,  the  neutral  ports  were  equally 


i6 

closed;  for  not  only  was  the  fitting  out  of  privateers,  as  also  of 
commissioned  cruisers,  in  disregard  of  neutrality,  and  so  illegal, 
but  if  an  evasion  of  the  law  was  successful  or  even  connived  at, 
the  bringing  in  of  prizes  was  forbidden.  The  entire  inducement 
and  incentive  to  privateering,  in  the  sense  of  the  Declaration 
of  Paris,  was  thus  cut  off.  So  far  as  privateering,  therefore, 
is  concerned,  whether  with  the  ports  of  the  Confederacy  or 
neutral  ports  as  a  basis,  everything  depended  on  the  blockade, 
and  the  observance  as  respects  prizes  of  foreign  neutraHty; 
and  on  that  neutraHty,  and  its  continual  observance,  the  block- 
ade itself  was  dependent.  Consequently,  everything  in  the 
struggle  from  the  outset,  privateering  of  course  included, 
hinged  on  what  is  known  as  Sea  Dominion. 

So  far,  however,  as  the  present  study  is  concerned,  the  one 
important  result  thus  far  reached  is  that,  apparently,  the  first 
article  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris  had,  under  conditions  then 
prevaiHng,  so  Httle  practical  apphcation  to  maritime  opera- 
tions during  the  Civil  War  as  to  constitute  in  them  but  a  negUgi- 
ble  quantity.  The  Confederate  commissioners  in  the  extract 
just  given  from  their  communication  to  the  British  Foreign 
Secretary  set  forth  the  situation  in  terms  of  moderation  when 
they  said  that  the  Southern  States  were  "neither  a  manufac- 
turing nor  a  commercial  people,  .  .  .  having  no  navy,  no 
commercial  marine,  out  of  which  to  improvise  public  armed 
vessels  to  any  considerable  extent."  Captain  J.  D.  Bulloch, 
the  Confederate  naval  agent  and  representative  in  Europe 
throughout  the  struggle,  writing  in  1883,  stated  the  case  far 
more  correctly.  He  said:  "It  was  impossible  to  build  armored 
vessels  in  the  Confederate  States  for  operations  on  the  coast; 
—  neither  the  materials;nor  the  mechanics  were  there;  and  be- 
sides, even  if  iron  and  skilled  artisans  had  been  within  reach, 
there  was  not  a  mill  in  the  country  to  roll  the  plates,  nor  furnaces 
and  machinery  to  forge  them,  nor  shops  to  make  the  engines."  ^ 
Under  such  conditions  the  most  the  Confederacy  could  accom- 
phsh  within  itself  was  to  construct  rude  floating  batteries, 
propelled  by  most  insufficient  engines,  and  adapted  to  inland- 
water  operations  both  defensive  and  offensive,  —  vessels  of  the 
type  of  the  Virginia,  at  Norfolk,  and  the  Tennessee,  at  Mobile, 
in  no  way  fit  for  ocean  service.     Nor  were  conditions  mgre 

^  Bulloch,  Secret  Service,  i.  380. 


17 

favorable  for  the  proper  fitting  out  of  a  privateering  fleet.  Bul- 
loch subsequently  wrote:  "It  is  quite  safe  for  me  to  state  that 
at  the  beginning  of  the  year  1861  there  was  not,  within  the  whole 
boundary  of  the  Confederacy,  a  single  private  yard  having  the 
plant  necessary  to  build  and  equip  a  cruising  ship  of  the  most 
moderate  offensive  capacity."  ^ 

Under  such  conditions,  domestic  and  foreign,  Confederate 
privateering  within  the  meaning  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris 
died  an  early  and  natural  death.^    As  prizes  could  not,  because\ 
of  the  blockade,  be  sent  into  Confederate  ports  for  purpose  of  \ 
condemnation  and  sale,  and  as  all  foreign  ports  were  closed  to  | 
them,  the  inducement  ceased  to  exist.    The  record  of  Confed-  I 
erate  privateering  proper  can,  therefore,  be  briefly  recounted. ' 

Early  in  May,  186 1,  at  the  outset  of  troubles,  a  rumor  got 
abroad  that  an  iron  steamer,  the  Peerless,  equipped  on  the 
Great  Lakes,  had  been  bought  by  the  Confederate  Govern- 
ment, preparatory  to  being  sent  to  sea  to  operate  on  American 
commerce.  Secretary  Seward  was  at  this  time,  as  we  now 
know,  in  an  irritable  state  of  mind,  and  one  decidedly  aggres- 
sive. The  course  of  domestic  events  was  not  going  as  he  had 
planned  it  should  go;  his  position  in  the  Cabinet  was  anomalous; 
his  leadership  was  challenged;  his  influence,  as  the  natural  re- 
sult of  frequent  forecastings  invariably  proved  mistaken  in  the 
result,  was  plainly  waning  both  in  Washington  and  the  country 
at  large.  Temporarily,  at  any  rate,  his  prestige  was  distinctly 
impaired.  Not  unnaturally,  also,  his  views  at  this  stage  of  the 
conflict  as  to  the  foreign  policy  best  to  be  adopted  under  circum- 
stances altogether  unprecedented  were,  to  say  the  least,  inchoate. 
So  he,  head  of  the  Department  of  State,  now  sent  a  telegraphic 
order  to  all  naval  officers  of  the  United  States  to  seize  the  Peer- 
less "under  any  flag,  and  with  any  papers,"  if  they  had  probable 
information  that  she  had  been  sold  to  agents  of  the  Confederacy. 
In  consequence  of  a  vigorous  protest  against  such  a  high-handed 
measure  immediately  filed  by  the  British  Minister,  the  Secretary, 
however,  the  same  day  wrote  to  Lord  Lyons  that  if  the  informa- 
tion on  which  action  was  taken  "proved  to  be  incorrect,  full 
satisfaction  will  be  promptly  given."  ^    And  even  in  this  formal 

^Bulloch,  Secret  Service,  i.  22, 

^Seward  to  Adams,  May  28,  1862.    Diplomatic  Correspondence,  1862,  loi. 

»  Parliamentary  Paper,  North  America,  No.  i,  1862,  31-33. 


i8 

paper  the  usual  confusion  of  thought  and  expression  was  per- 
ceptible, for  it  was  stated  that  the  ship  in  question  was  rumored 
to  have  been  sold  to  the  de  facto  insurgent  government  "to  be 
used  as  a  privateer."  There  was  a  distinctly  humorous  ele- 
ment in  the  outcome  of  this  initial  episode,  illustrative  of  the 
way  in  which  important  public  business  was  then  transacted. 
Lord  Lyons  in  due  time  reported  to  Earl  Russell,  "It  turned 
out  that  the  ship  had  all  the  time  been  purchased  by  the 
United  States  government  itself,"  and  this  purchase  had  been 
"the  cause  of  proceedings  of  the  vessel  which  were  looked 
upon  as  suspicious."  ^ 

So  far  as  my  investigations  enable  me  to  form  an  opinion, 
there  is  thus  no  case  of  a  vessel  actually  going  out  from  any 
foreign  port  equipped  as  a  privateer  to  sail  under  Confederate 
letters  of  marque.  In  every  instance  the  vessel  so  equipped  and 
going  to  sea  was  the  property  of  the  Confederacy,  commissioned 
as  such,  and  intended  to  perform  the  part  of  a  modern  commerce 
destroyer. 

The  only  privateers,  properly  so  classified,  which,  sailing 
under  letters  of  marque,  appeared  upon  the  ocean  and  com- 
mitted ravages  on  American  commerce,  were  vessels  equipped 
very  early  in  the  war  in  Confederate  ports,  and  sent  to  sea 
therefrom.  This  phase  of  the  struggle  has  been  exhaustively 
and  satisfactorily  treated  by  J.  T.  Scharf  in  his  History  of  the 
Confederate  Navy?  The  author,  also,  therein  draws  the  dis- 
tinction already  referred  to: 

A  privateer,  as  the  name  imports,  is  a  private  armed  ship,  fitted 
out  at  the  owner's  expense,  but  commissioned  by  a  belligerent  gov- 
ernment to  capture  the  ships  and  goods  of  the  enemy  at  sea,  or  the 
ships  of  neutrals  when  conveying  to  the  enemy  goods  contraband  of 

*  Lyons  to  Russell,  lb.,  115.  This  was  not  the  only  or  most  important  instance 
in  which,  during  the  early  weeks  of  the  Lincoln  administration,  the  functions  of 
the  Navy  Department  were  without  consultation  assumed  by  the  Department  of 
State.  In  the  Welles  Diary  (i.  23-25)  there  is  an  interesting  account  of  a  similar 
proceeding,  leading  at  a  most  critical  juncture  to  consequences  of  far  greater 
moment.  Secretary  Welles,  probably  with  undue  severity,  subsequently  wrote 
{Diary,  I.  204)  of  Mr.  Seward:  "He  gets  behind  me,  tampers  with  my  subordi- 
nates, and  interferes  injuriously  and  ignorantly  in  naval  matters,  not  so  much 
from  wrong  purposes,  but  as  a  busybody  by  nature.  I  have  not  made  these 
matters  subjects  of  complaint  outside  and  think  it  partly  the  result  of  usage  and 
practice  at  Albany."     See,  also,  lb.,  n.  160. 

•  Chapter  rv.  53-93.    Second  edition.     1894. 


19 

war.  A  privateer  differs  from  a  pirate  in  tliis,  that  the  one  has  a 
commission  and  the  other  has  none.  A  privateer  is  entitled  to  the 
same  rights  of  war  as  the  pubHc  vessels  of  the  belligerent.  A  pirate 
ship  has  no  rights,  and  her  crew  are  liable  to  be  captured  and  put 
to  death  by  all  nations,  as  robbers  and  murderers  on  the  high  seas. ; 

In  examining  the  list  in  this  book  given  of  vessels  fitted  out 
and  sailing  from  Confederate  ports  under  letters  of  marque 
during  the  first  summer  of  the  War,  it  is  curious  to  observe  how 
closely  the  traditions  of  1812-1815  were  followed.  The  vessels 
were  in  greatest  part  mere  schooners,  hastily  equipped  and 
insufficiently  armed.  Fifty  years  behind  the  times,  and  rely- 
ing solely  on  canvas,  they  were  at  the  mercy  of  ships  pro- 
pelled by  steam.  The  following  is,  for  instance,  an  individual 
experience: 

The  revenue  cutter  Aiken,  which  had  been  seized  in  Charleston 
by  the  authorities  of  South  CaroHna  before  the  firing  on  Fort  Sumter, 
was  fitted  out  as  a  privateer,  and  called  the  Petrel,  and  placed  under 
the  command  of  Capt.  Wm.  Perry.  On  July  27  th  the  privateer 
schooner  sailed  out  of  Charleston,  and  stood  for  the  U.  S.  frigate 
St.  Lawrence,  which  she  mistook  for  a  merchantman,  as  all  her  ports 
were  closed.  When  the  Petrel  got  within  range  she  fired  three  shots 
without  doing  any  damage.  The  St.  Lawrence  returned  with  shot 
and  shell  a  terrific  fire,  one  shell  exploding  in  the  hull  of  the  Petrel, 
and  sinking  her  instantly.  The  boats  of  the  frigate  were  lowered,  and 
picked  up  thirty-six  out  of  forty  of  the  privateer's  crew,  who  were 
taken  aboard,  and  their  feet  and  hands  heavily  manacled.  The 
remaining  four  were  drowned.^ 

During  the  first  months  of  the  war,  and  before  the  blockade 
became  really  effective,  quite  a  number  of  these  privateers  got 
to  sea,  and  some  of  their  captures  —  sent  into  Confederate 
ports  —  were  there  duly  condemned  and  sold.  Others  were 
released  after  being  bonded;  but  the  greatest  number  of  ves- 
sels captured  were  scuttled  and  otherwise  destroyed.  The 
injury  thus  sustained  by  the  United  States  merchant  marine 
was  undoubtedly  considerable,  but  in  largest  part  due  to  the 
alarm  occasioned,  and  the  immediate  consequent  transfer  of 
American  shipping  to  foreign  ownership.  As  the  war  progressed 
and  the  blockade  became  more  effective,  conditions  produced 

1  Scharf,  86. 


20 

their  natural  results.     Privateering  was  abandoned  as  both 
perilous  and  unprofitable,  and  the  maritime  activity  and  spirit 
of  adventure  of  the  Confederacy  turned  in  the  direction  of 
blockade  running  as  at  once  less  dangerous  and  far  more  remun- 
erative.    Privateering  within  the  scope  of  Article  I  of  the 
I        Treaty  of  Paris  may,  therefore,  be  said  to  have  ceased  to  be  a 
factor  in  the  operations  of  the  Civil  War  by  the  close  of  i86i.^ 
Premising  these  distinctions,  principles  and  facts,  it  is  now 
proper  to  return  to  the  narrative  and  the  sequence  of  events. 
■^^        The  British  proclamation  of  belligerency,  as  it  is  called,  or 
^      more  properly  the  proclamation  of  neutrality  in  the  conflict 
which  had  developed,  with  the  recognition  of  a  belHgerent 
character  in  both  parties  thereto,  was  made  public  in  London 
during  the  week  (May  15,  1861)  following  Mr.  Russell's  visit 
at  the  office  of  Attorney- General  Benjamin,  at  Montgomery; 
and  Secretary  Seward  was  simultaneously  formulating  a  policy, 
the  circular  in  relation  to  the  accession  of  the  United  States  to 
the  Declaration  of  Paris  having  been  sent  out  on  the  24th  of 
April,  or  some  three  weeks  before. 

In  the  interim  had  occurred  the  tumultuous  popular  uprising 
of  the  loyal  States  consequent  upon  the  attack  on  Sumter.  The 
stage  of  incertitude  and  resulting  panic  hadi  passed  away, 
troops,  such  as  they  were,  were  pouring  into  Washington,  and 
the  country  was  well  entered  on  the  intermediate,  over-confident 
and  self-inflated  stage  of  the  conflict  referred  to  in  the  earlier 
portion  of  this  paper.    Secretary  Seward  shared  to  the  full  in 

^  "In  the  Civil  War  .  .  .  the  rebel  government  offered  its  letters  of  marque; 
but,  as  nearly  all  the  maritime  powers  had  warned  their  subjects  that  if  they 
served  in  privateers  in  the  war,  their  governments  would  not  interfere  to  protect 
them,  and  as  the  United  States  had  threatened  to  treat  such  persons  as  pirates, 
and  the  naval  power  of  the  United  States  was  formidable,  no  avowedly  foreign 
private  armed  vessels  took  letters  of  marque;  and  the  ostensibly  Confeder- 
ate vessels  were  commissioned  as  of  its  regular  navy."  Dana,  Wheaton,  456M. 
"One  popular  error  pervades  all  which  has  been  said  or  written,  on  both  sides  of 
the  line,  about  the  Confederate  navy.  This  is  the  general  title  of  'privateer' 
given  to  all  vessels  not  cooped  up  in  southern  harbors.  .  .  .  There  was  a  law 
passed,  regulating  the  issue  of  letters  of  marque;  and  from  time  to  time  much 
was  heard  of  these  in  the  South.  But  [with  the  exception  of  the]  'Jeff  Davis' 
not  more  than  two  or  three  ever  foimd  their  way  to  sea,  and  even  these  accom- 
phshed  nothing.  At  one  time,  a  company  with  heavy  capital  was  gotten  up  in 
Richmond,  for  the  promotion  of  such  enterprises;  but  it  was  looked  upon  as  a 
job  and  was  little  successful  in  any  sense."  De  Leon,  Four  Years  in  Rebel 
Capitals,  262. 


21 

these  feelings,  and  that  he  did  so  was  manifest  both  in  his 
utterances  and  his  official  despatches.  Acting,  it  would  appear, 
under  the  impulse  of  the  moment,  and  without  sufficiently  in- 
forming himself  as  to  the  character  of  the  action  taken  by  the 
British  Government,  or  the  consequences  to  be  apprehended 
therefrom,  Mr.  Seward  not  only  now  assumed  high  ground,  but 
the  ground  by  him  taken  could  by  no  possibiHty  be  maintained 
unless  the  most  sanguine  anticipations  of  the  Union  authorities 
were  fulfilled  in  the  immediate  future,  those  anticipations  in  no 
way  making  provision  for  an  unexpected  adverse  catastrophe. 
Accordingly,  the  Secretary  (May  17th)  set  to  work  drafting 
what  he  while  engaged  upon  it  described  in  a  famihar  letter  to 
a  member  of  his  family  as  a  "bold  remonstrance  before  it  is  too 
late."  ^  His  remonstrance  took  the  form  of  the  despatch  No.  10 
of  May  2ist,  addressed  to  Mr.  Adams.^  It  is  unnecessary  for 
present  purposes  to  refer  to  it  in  detail.  It  is  sufficient  to  say 
that  upon  its  receipt  and  first  perusal  Mr.  Adams  wrote  in  his 
Diary:  "The  Government  seems  almost  ready  to  declare  war 
with  all  the  powers  of  Europe,  and  almost  instructs  me  to  with- 
draw from  communication  with  the  ministers  here  in  a  certain 
contingency.  ...  I  scarcely  know  how  to  understand  Mr. 
Seward.  The  rest  of  the  Government  may  be  demented  for  all 
I  know;  but  he  surely  is  calm  and  wise.  My  duty  here  is  in 
so  far  as  I  can  do  it  honestly  to  prevent  the  irritation  from 
coming  to  a  downright  quarrel.  It  seems  to  me  like  throwing 
the  game  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy."  ^  In  the  despatch  re- 
ferred to  the  Secretary,  in  addition  to  the  suppression  of  domes- 

^  Seward  at  Washington,  11.  575-576. 

2  The  general  tenor  of  this  despatch  was  known  at  the  time  to  Lord  Lyons. 
He  wrote  concerning  it  to  Lord  John  Russell,  under  date  of  May  23d,  as  follows: 
"Upon  receiving  the  intelligence  of  your  Lordship's  declaration  in  Parliament, 
Mr.  Seward  drew  up  a  despatch  to  Mr.  Adams  to  be  communicated  to  your  Lord- 
ship in  terms  still  stronger  than  any  he  had  before  used.  I  fear  that  the  President 
has  consented  to  its  being  sent,  on  condition,  however,  that  it  is  to  be  left  to  Mr. 
Adams's  discretion  to  communicate  it  or  not,  as  he  may  think  advisable.  If 
sent,  it  will  probably  reach  London  about  the  same  time  with  this  despatch." 
(Parliamentary  Paper,  1862,  39.)  This  despatch  reached  the  Foreign  Ofi&ce 
June  4th;  the  despatch  referred  to  in  it  did  not  reach  the  Legation  in  London 
until  six  days  later,  Jime  loth.  See  also  Parliamentary  Paper  (1862),  115,  where, 
just  at  the  crisis  of  the  Trent  affair  (December  25,  i86i),the  attention  of  Earl 
Russell  is  called  by  Lord  Lyons  to  Mr.  Seward's  despatch  of  May  21,  then  just 
made  public  in  the  printed  diplomatic  correspondence  accompanying  the  message 
of  the  President. 

*  Ms.  Diary,  Monday,  June  10,  1861. 


22 

tic  insurrection,  contemplated  as  possible  if  not  immediately 
impending,  a  war  ''between  the  United  States  and  one,  two,  or 
even  more  European  nations,"  —  a  conflict  of  which  he  now 
wrote  to  his  wife,  "it  will  be  dreadful,  but  the  end  will  be  sure 
and  swift."  The  despatch  was,  in  fact,  a  general  defiance  thrown 
forth  to  governments  throughout  the  world,  whether  avowedly 
unfriendly  or  assumed  to  be  so !  ^ 

In  this  despatch  as  originally  drawn  and  submitted  to  the 
President,  the  Secretary,  reflecting  the  mood  and  expectations 
of  the  hour,  among  much  else  observed  that  "after  long  for- 
bearance, designed  to  soothe  discontent  and  avert  the  need 
of  civil  war,  the  land  and  naval  forces  of  the  United  States 
have  been  put  in  motion  to  repress  the  insurrection.  The 
true  character  of  the  pretended  new  State  is  at  once  revealed. 
It  is  seen  to  be  a  Power  existing  in  pronunciamento  only."  ^ 

In  preparing  this  puzzling,  if  not.  now  well-nigh  incompre- 
hensible state  paper,  couched  in  language  plainly  calculated  to 

^  During  the  earlier  portions  of  the  Lincohi  administration,  largely  through  the 
influence  of  the  Secretary  of  State,  no  regular  Cabinet  meetings  were  held.  Mr. 
WeUes  asserts  in  his  Diary  (i.  138)  that  "Many  of  the  important  measures,  par- 
ticularly of  his  own  Department,  [Mr.  Seward]  managed  to  dispose  of  or  contrived 
to  have  determined  independent  of  the  Cabinet."  See  also  lb.,  i.  134,  154,  203, 
274.  So  far  as  anywhere  appears,  this  course  was  followed  with  respect  to  the 
despatch  of  May  21.  It  was  never  submitted  to  the  Cabinet,  and,  while  rumors 
of  its  purport  were  current,  knowledge  of  its  details  seems  at  the  time  to  have 
been  confined  to  the  Secretary,  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  Mr.  Sumner,  Chairman  of  the 
Senate  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations,  who  was  consulted  by  the  President  in 
regard  to  it.  No  reference  to  what  then  occurred  is  found  in  Pierce's  Life  of 
Sumner.  A  year  later,  however,  when  a  concerted  move  was  made  by  the  Re- 
publican Senators  to  bring  about  the  dismissal  of  Secretary  Seward  from  the 
Cabinet,  much  emphasis  was  laid  upon  this  despatch,  portions  of  which  had  been 
pubhshed  in  the  Diplomatic  Correspondence  of  the  previous  year.  In  his  Diary 
Secretary  WeUes  says  that  during  the  discussion  which  took  place,  December  20, 
1862,  between  the  conamittee  of  nine  Senators  and  the  President  and  members 
of  his  Cabinet,  the  volmne  of  Diplomatic  Correspondence  was  alluded  to;  "some 
letters  denounced  as  unwise  and  impolitic  were  specified,  one  of  which,  a  con- 
fidential despatch  to  Mr.  Adams,  was  read.  If  it  was  unwise  to  write,  it  was 
certainly  injudicious  and  indiscreet  to  publish  such  a  document."  {Diary,  i. 
198;  Lincoln  and  Seward,  76.)  The  Secretary  of  State  was  at  this  time  very 
generally  accused  of  transmitting  despatches  of  importance  to  the  foreign  rep- 
resentatives without  previously  submitting  them  to  the  President.  A  case  in 
point  was  developed  at  this  conference,  Mr.  Lincoln  expressing  great  surprise 
when  his  attention  was  called  by  Senator  Sumner  to  a  certain  despatch  in  the 
printed  Diplomatic  Correspondence  (that  to  Mr.  Adams,  July  5,  1862),  disclaiming 
any  knowledge  of  it.  Pierce,  iv.  iii. 
*  Nicolay  and  Hay,  Lincoln,  iv.  273. 


23 

provoke  and  precipitate  a  foreign  crisis,  one  thing  only  is- 
obvious,  —  the  Secretary  of  State  was,  in  plain  English,  dis- 
counting a  wholly  successful  outcome  of  the  movements  of  the 
land  and  naval  forces  of  the  United  States  then  preparing  to  be 
put  in  immediate  "motion  to  repress  the  insurrection."  So 
much  is  manifest.  What,  however,  was  |imphed  by  the  obser- 
vation in  the  paragraph  immediately  succeeding  that  from 
which  the  extract  just  given  is  quoted,  is  less  apparent.  The 
Secretary  went  on  to  assert  that  in  certain  contingencies  then 
regarded  as  of  more  than  probable  occurrence  "the  laws  of 
nations  afford  an  adequate  and  proper  remedy,  and  we  shall 
avail  ourselves  of  it."  Clearly  a  threat,  what  that  threat  sig- 
nified is  still  matter  of  inference. 

Though  a  lawyer  by  calling,  and  as  such  in  a  way  eminent, 
Mr.  Seward  did  not  possess  what  is  known  as  a  legal  mind,  much 
less  one  of  judicial  cast.  Long  retired  from  active  practice,  he 
had  never  given  any  particular  attention  to  the  problems  and 
collection  of  usages  which  make  up  the  body  of  what  is  denomi- 
nated International  Law.  He  now  also  freely  admitted  to  his 
Cabinet  colleagues  that,  though  almost  daily  called  upon  to 
deal  with  novel  and  intricate  international  issues,  he  never 
opened  the  treatises,  and  "that  he  was  too  old  to  study."  One 
of  his  associates  (Blair)  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that  in  his 
opinion  the  Secretary  of  State  knew  "less  of  public  law  than 
any  man  who  ever  held  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet";  while  another 
(Welles)  put  on  record  his  surprise  to  find  him  "so  Httle  ac- 
quainted with  the  books,"  ^  and  a  third  (Bates)  pronounced  him 
"no  lawyer  and  no  statesman."  ^  Sumner,  whose  own  concep- 
tions of  international  usage  were  distinctly  nebulous,  averred 
that  Seward  knew  nothing  of  it;  and  apparently  without  consult- 
ing so  familiar  an  authority  as  Wheaton,  the  Secretary  of  State 

1  Allowance  must  always  be  made  in  case  of  statements  found  in  the  Welles 
Diary  as  respects  Mr.  Seward.  Referring,  however,  to  his  lack  of  acquaintance 
with  the  principles  of  international  law,  Mr.  Welles  wrote  as  follows,  imder  a  date 
as  late  as  January  30,  1865 :  "  He  told  me  last  week  that  he  had  looked  in  no  book 
on  international  law  or  admiralty  law  since  he  entered  on  the  duties  of  his  present 
office.  EUs  thoughts,  he  says,  come  to  the  same  conclusions  as  the  writers  and 
students.  This  he  has  said  to  me  more  than  once.  In  administrating  the  govern- 
ment he  seems  to  have  little  idea  of  constitutional  and  legal  restraints,  but  acts 
as  if  the  ruler  was  omnipotent.  Hence  he  has  involved  himself  in  constant  diffi- 
cxilties."    Diary,  u.  232. 

*  Welles,  Diary,  i.  170,  233,  275,  285;  n.  93. 


24 

depended  for  his  conclusions  on  the  chief  clerk  of  the  Depart- 
ment and  a  few  unofficial  advisers  of  questionable  authority.^ 
What,  however,  Mr.  Seward  now  distinctly  implied,  was  that, 
should  Great  Britain  give  shelter  from  our  pursuit  and  punish- 

iment  to  those  whom  [she  declared  "lawful  belhgerents,"  but 
who  being  our  citizens  we  adjudged  to  be  "pirates,"  the  law 

/of  nations  would  justify  the  United  States  in  pursuing  such 

/  miscreants  into  neutral  harbors  and  there  destroying  them. 

^The  proposition  was  certainly  "bold,"  —  not  to  say  startling.^ 

^  "  [Seward]  has,  with  all  his  bustle  and  activity,  but  little  application;  relies 
on  Hunter  and  his  clerk,  Smith,  ...  to  sustain  him  and  hunt  up  his  author- 
ities." Welles,  Diary,  i.  275.  "Whiting,  Solicitor  of  the  War  Department,  has 
gone  to  Europe.  Is  sent  out  by  Seward,  I  suppose.  .  .  .  [William  Whiting  is] 
such  a  man  as  Stanton  would  select  and  Seward  use."  lb.,  381,  544;  11.  85. 
William  Whiting  then  occupied  the  position  of  solicitor  of  the  War  Department. 
Caleb  Gushing,  whose  loyalty  at  this  time  was  not  above  suspicion,  also  seems 
to  have  been  an  unofficial  adviser.    Ih.,  i.  275. 

2  This  would  seem  to  be  the  unavoidable  inference  to  be  drawn  from  the  de- 
spatches of  Secretary  Seward  connected  with  events  of  subsequent  occurrence. 
On  the  night  of  October  6,  1864,  the  Confederate  cruiser  Florida  was  run  down 
by  the  United  States  cruiser  Wachusett  in  the  harbor  of  Bahia,  Brazil,  and  sub- 
sequently towed  out  to  sea  and  carried  to  Hampton  Roads,  as  prize.  In  this  case 
there  was  no  controversy  as  to  facts.  The  whole  proceeding  was  high-handed,  and 
in  manifest  violation  of  recognized  principles  of  international  law.  As  such  it  led 
to  formal  representations  on  behalf  of  Brazil  to  which  Secretary  Seward  replied 
under  date  of  December  20,  1864.  The  correspondence  can  be  found  in  the 
"British  Case"  prepared  for  the  Geneva  Arbitration  (75-78)  and  in  Bulloch's 
Secret  Service  of  the  Confederate  States  in  Europe  (i.  199-224).  In  his  reply  to  the 
reclamation  of  the  Brazilian  Minister  Secretary  Seward  then  wrote  that  the 
Florida,  "like  the  Alabama,  was  a  pirate,  belonging  to  no  nation  or  lawful  bellig- 
erent, and  therefore  that  the  harbouring  and  supplying  of  these  piratical  ships 
and  their  crews  in  BraziUan  ports  were  wrongs  and  injuries  for  which  Brazil 
justly  owes  reparation  to  the  United  States."  The  Secretary  further  denied  that 
the  "insurgents  of  this  country  are  a  lawful  naval  belligerent;  and,  on  the  con- 
trar})-,  it  maintains  that  the  ascription  of  that  character  by  the  Government  of 
Brazil  to  insurgent  citizens  of  the  United  States,  who  have  hitherto  been,  and 
who  still  are,  destitute  of  naval  forces,  ports,  and  courts,  is  an  act  of  intervention 
in  derogation  of  the  law  of  nations,  and  imfriendly  and  wrongful,  as  it  is  mani- 
festly injurious,  to  the  United  States." 

In  the  preceding  year,  in  a  despatch  from  Mr.  Seward  to  Mr.  Adams  {Diplo- 
matic Correspondence,  1863,  Part  I.  309-310)  relating  to  the  recent  decision  in 
the  case  of  the  Alexandra,  Mr.  Seward  wrote  as  follows:  "If  the  law  of  Great 
Britain  must  be  left  without  amendment,  and  be  construed  by  the  government  in 
conformity  with  the  rulings  of  the  chief  baron  of  the  exchequer,  then  there  will  be 
left  for  the  United  States  no  alternative  but  to  protect  themelves  and  their  com- 
merce against  armed  cruisers  proceeding  from  British  ports,  as  against  the  naval 
forces  of  a  public  enemy;  and  also  to  claim  and  insist  upon  indemnities  for  the  in- 
juries which  aU  such  expeditions  have  hitherto  committed  or  shall  hereafter 
commit  against  this  government  and  the  citizens  of  the  United  States.    To  this 


25 

Coming,  however,  to  the  final  paragraph  in  the  extracts 
from  the  despatch  of  May  21st  —  that  relating  to  the  Treaty 
of  Paris  —  it  will  be  noted  that  the  Secretary  referred  to  it  as 
"aboHshing  privateering  everywhere  in  all  cases  and  forever"; 
he  then  went  on  as  follows:  "You  already  have  our  authority 
to  propose  to  [Great  Britain]  our  accession  to  that  declara- 
tion. If  she  refuse  to  receive  it,  it  can  only  be  because  she  is 
wilHng  to  become  the  patron  of  privateering  when  aimed  at 
our  devastation."  ^ 

We  now  come  to  the  true  inwardness  of  the  present  discus- 
sion. What  did  Seward  mean  by  this  language?  What  was 
he  driving  at?  Did  he  speak  in  good  faith?  —  or  did  he  have 
an  ulterior  and  undisclosed  end  always  in  view,  that  end  to  be 
attained  by  indirection?  The  study  becomes  interesting,  for 
it  is  necessarily  made  from  the  dramatis  personae  point  of  view. 
It  involves  the  correct  reading  of  the  individual  character  of 
eminent  men  at  a  very  critical  period  historically.  What  then 
was  Seward  proposing  to  himself?    What  considerations  actu- 

end  this  government  is  now  preparing  a  naval  force  with  the  utmost  vigor;  and  if 
the  national  navy,  which  it  is  rapidly  creating,  shall  not  be  sufficient  for  the 
emergency,  then  the  United  States  must  bring  into  emplo3Tnent  such  private 
armed  naval  forces  as  the  mercantile  marine  shall  afford.  .  .  .  Can  it  be  an  occa- 
sion for  either  surprise  or  complaint  that  if  this  condition  of  things  is  to  remain 
and  receive  the  deliberate  sanction  of  the  British  government,  the  navy  of  the 
United  States  will  receive  instructions  to  pursue  these  enemies  into  the  ports 
which  thus,  in  violation  of  the  law  of  nations  and  the  obligations  of  neutrality, 
become  harbors  for  the  pirates?"  In  connection  with  these  extracts  it  should  be 
observed  that  the  first  —  that  relating  to  the  Florida  —  occurred  at  the  close  of 
December,  1864,  when  the  Civil  War  was  rapidly  drawing  to  a  dose.  The  corre- 
spondence, in  this  case,  was  submitted  to  the  Cabinet,  and  the  despatch  to  the 
Brazilian  minister  was  approved  (Welles,  Diary,  ii.  184-186,  197).  There  is  no 
evidence  that  the  previous  despatch  to  Mr.  Adams,  of  July  11,  1863,  was  sub- 
mitted to  the  Cabinet  or  had  been  approved  by  the  President  before  transmission. 
It  was  not  communicated  by  Mr.  Adams  to  Earl  Russell;  and  when  it  subse- 
quently appeared  in  the  United  States  Diplomatic  Correspondence,  "a,  storm  was 
raised  in  the  House  of  Commons.  This  was  not  calmed  until  Earl  Russell  claimed 
that  as  the  despatch  had  never  been  laid  before  him,  he  had  been  spared  the  diffi- 
culty and  pain  of  giving  an  appropriate  answer  to  it."  (Bancroft,  Seward,  n. 
390.)  While  the  Secretary  naturally  hesitated  to  advance  such  a  claim  as  an 
accepted  principle  of  international  law,  he  seems  not  to  have  been  unwilling 
vaguely  to  imply  as  much,  venturing  on  no  specific  proposition.  The  threat  of 
a  recourse  to  privateering  in  certain  contingencies  which  must  inevitably  have  .^  "*, «»  X 
ensued  had  the  action  taken  by  the  Wachusett  been  ventured  upon  under .  in-^^^  '^ 
structions  in  British  waters,  was  expressed  in  language  which  could  not  be  l^riied  ^v 
even'diplomatically  veiled.  -  \ 

^  Nicolay  and  Hay,  Lincoln,  iv.  273.  ^ 


26 

ated  Earl  Russell  in  the  course  he  was  presently  to  take?  How 
did  Mr.  Adams,  Lord  Lyons  and  Mr.  Dayton,  who  bore  the 
subordinate  parts  in  the  drama,  demean  themselves? 

Seward  is  primarily  to  be  considered  and  disposed  of.  His 
was  the  leading  part.  He  had  in  the  first  place  announced  that 
dealing  with  the  privateers  saiUng  under  Confederate  letters 
of  marque  was  a  matter  within  the  exclusive  prerogative  of  the 
United  States,  the  Confederacy  then  (May  21st)  not  being  a 
recognized  belhgerent;  and  the  United  States  proposed,  by 
virtue  of  its  municipal  law,  to  treat  the  privateers  as  pirates. 
Seward's  scheme  unquestionably  was,  by  an  adroit  though 
somewhat  transparent  move  on  the  diplomatic  chess-board,  to 
force  the  neutral  maritime  powers  into  a  position  inconsistent 
with  the  law,  —  whether  international  or  of  humanity;  that  is, 
he  proposed  by  giving  notice  as  prescribed  to  secure  the  acces- 
sion of  this  country  to  the  stipulations  of  the  Treaty  of  Paris 
under  which  privateering  was  aboHshed,  and  then  the  United 
States  was,  as  the  sole  recognized  sovereign  nationahty,  to  de- 
mand of  the  Powers  that  "privateering  [being]  everywhere  and 
in  all  cases  and  forever"  aboKshed,  the  Powers  must  refuse 
access  to  their  ports  to  the  Confederate  "pirates,"  as  he 
designated  them.  Thus  reducing  them  into  the  class  of  crim- 
inals or  outlaws,  —  as  such  to  be  summarily  dealt  with. 

Such  was  Seward's  scheme,  as  it  first  assumed  shape  in  his 
mind. 

Yet,  again,  the  matter  of  dates  now  becomes  important. 
Seward  took  the  initial  step  leading  to  this  position  April  24th, 
—  twelve  days  only  after  the  attack  on  Sumter.  He  then  noti- 
fied the  proposed  accession  of  the  United  States  to  the  Decla- 
ration of  Paris.  The  Confederacy  had  not  up  to  that  time  any- 
where been  recognized  as  a  belligerent;  and,  that  being  the  case, 
Seward  assumed  that  the  United  States,  being  the  "exclusive 
sovereign,"  rightfully  and  as  of  course  spoke  internationally 
for  the  so-called  Confederacy  as  well  as  for  itself. 

Unfortunately  for  the  practical  working  of  this  theory. 
Great  Britain  and  France,  acting  in  co-operation  at  this  junc- 
ture, recognized  the  Confederacy  as  a  belhgerent;  and  then, 
under  all  accepted  rules  of  international  law,  the  new  belhger- 
ent had  a  right  to  carry  on  its  operations  on  water  as  on  land. 

Here  was  a  new  and  somewhat  irritating  as  well  as  extremely 


27 

perplexing  issue;  and  again  Seward  took  high  ground.  As  fore- 
shadowed in  his  despatch  No.  lo,  he  now  insisted  that  the  Con- 
federacy was  not  a  belligerent  in  any  full  sense  of  the  term  until 
acknowledged  as  such  by  the  sovereign  power  of  the  United 
States.  Writing  to  Mr.  Dayton  at  this  time  Mr.  Seward  thus 
expressed  himself,  in  a  despatch  marked  "strictly  confidential": 

You  seem  to  us  to  have  adopted  the  idea  that  the  insurgents  are    ;  e^        y  ^"^ 
necessarily  a  belligerent  power  because  the  British  and  French  Gov-  ^^ 

emments  have  chosen  in  some  of  their  public  papers  to  say  that  they  ^ 
are  so.  .  .  .  Our  view  is  on  the  contrary.  .  .  .  We  do  not  admit, 
and  we  shall  never  admit,  even  the  fundamental  statement  you  as- 
sume, namely,  that  Great  Britain  and  France  have  recognized  the 
insurgents  as  a  belKgerent  party.  True,  you  say  that  they  have  so 
declared.  We  reply:  Yes,  but  they  have  not  declared  so  to  us.  You 
may  rejoin:  Their  public  declaration  concludes  the  fact.  We  never- 
theless reply:  It  must  be  not  their  declarations,  but  their  action 
that  shall  conclude  the  fact.  That  action  ^does  not  yet  appear,  and 
we  trust,  for  the  sake  of  harmony  with  them  and  peace  throughout 
the  world,  that  it  will  not  happen.^ 

Accordingly,  he  vaguely  claimed  that  the  United  States, 
not  acknowledging  the  Confederacy  as  a  belligerent,  could 
treat  as  it  saw  fit  vessels  commissioned  by  the  Montgomery 
government  as  privateers;  and,  privateers  being  abolished  by 
the  Declaration  of  Paris,  they  consequently  became  pirates. 
Having  thus  fixed  their  status,  he  further  distinctly  intimated 
an  intention  to  claim  that  they  could  be  pursued  into  neutral 
ports,  and  there  destroyed  as  common  enemies  of  mankind.^ 

Such  was  apparently  the  line  of  procedure  somewhat  vaguely 
formulated  in  Seward's  mind;  the  ultimate  step  of  which  he 
held  in  reserve  throughout  what  are  known  as  the  negotiations 
relating  to  the  Declaration  of  Paris,  now  gravely  entered  upon. 

*  Moore,  International  Law  Digest,  vn.  574. 

*  In  the  case  of  the  Florida  the  commander  of  the  Wachusett  had  acted  on  his 
own  responsibility.  His  proceeding  was  therefore  disavowed  with  expressions  of 
regret;  and  this  was  to  be  regarded  as  "ample  reparation"  in  view  of  "the  en- 
during sense  of  injuries"  entertained  by  the  United  States.  Had,  however,  the 
violation  of  neutrality  taken  place  by  order  under  the  conditions  set  forth  in  the 
despatch  to  Mr.  Adams  of  July  11, 1863,  the  law  of  nations  "afforded  an  adequate 
and  proper  remedy,"  that  remedy  being  apparently  an  oflFer  of  ample  though 
formal  reparation,  accompanied,  of  course,  in  proper  cases,  by  a  stiitable  money 
indenmity.     See,  also,  Welles,  Diary,  n.  185,  197. 


28 

So  much  for  Secretary  Seward.  It  is  now  necessary  to 
turn  to  the  other  parties  to  that  negotiation;  and  first,  Earl 
Russell. 

In  the  earliest  of  the  discussions  which  took  place  in  the 
Commons  (May  2,  1861)  after  the  firing  on  Sumter,  Lord  John 
Russell,  as  he  then  was,  used  the  striking  expression  that  Great 
Britain  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  American  troubles,  and 
added,  "For  God's  sake,  let  us,  if  possible,  keep  out  of  them!" 
As  a  statement  of  fact  also,  and  proposition  of  international 
usage.  Lord  John  Russell  stood  on  firm  ground  when  he  further 
at  this  juncture  said  in  the  Commons:  "a  power  or  a  community 
(call  it  which  you  will)  which  [is]  at  war! with  another,  and  which 
[covers]  the  sea  with  its  cruisers,  must  either  be  acknowledged 
as  a  belligerent,  or  dealt  with  as  a  pirate."  ^  The  issue  was  clear 
and  made  up.  President  Lincoln  had  by  proclamation  an- 
nounced that  those  captured  on  Confederate  cruisers  or  priva- 
teers were  to  be  dealt  ,with  as  pirates.  These  utterances  of 
Lord  John  clearly  foreshadowed  the  position  of  neutrality  the 
British  Government,  of  which  he  was  in  this  matter  the  mouth- 
piece, proposed  to  assume.  That  Government  was,  however, 
most  distrustful  of  Secretary  Seward  personally.  Those  com- 
posing it  very  generally  suspected  that  he  intended  to  excite 
some  grave  foreign  complication  in  order  to  bring  about  a 
domestic  reconcihation.  With  this  possibility  in  mind.  Lord 
John  Russell  had  written  to  Lord  Lyons  as  long  before  as  Feb- 
ruary 20th,  as  follows:  "Supposing,  however,  that  Mr.  Lin- 
coln, acting  under  bad  advice,  should  endeavor  to  provide 
excitement  for  the  public  mind  by  raising  questions  with  Great 
Britain,  Her  Majesty's  Government  feel  no  hesitation  as  to  the 
policy  they  would  pursue.  .  .  .  They  would  take  care  to  let 
the  Government  which  multipHed  provocations  and  sought  for 
quarrels  understand  that  their  forbearance  sprung  from  the  con- 
sciousness of  strength  and  not  from  the  timidity  of  weakness." 

The  British  Secretary  did  not  err  in  this  surmise.  The  idea 
of  a  foreign  compHcation  as  a  counter-irritant  was,  as  we  now 
know,  distinctly  in  Seward's  mind,  even  at  that  early  date 
(February,  1861).  Philosophizing  on  this  problem  in  the 
measured  language  characteristic  of  his  writings,  Mr.  Rhodes 
says  of  the  Secretary's  mental  condition  four  months  later: 

*  Walpole,  Twenty-five  Years,  n.  41. 


29 

The  infatuation  of  Seward  is  hard  to  understand;  it  shows  that 
the  notion  which  had  prompted  the  **  Thoughts  for  the  President's 
Consideration"  still  lodged  in  his  brain,  and  that  he  dreamed  that 
if  the  United  States  made  war  on  England  because  she  helped  the 
Confederacy,  the  Southerners,  by  some  occult  emotional  change, 
would  sink  their  animosity  to  the  North,  and  join  with  it  for  the  sake 
of  overcoming  the  traditional  enemy.  His  unconcern  at  the  prospect 
of  serious  trouble  with  England  was  not  courage,  but  a  recklessness 
which  made  him  obHvious  of  what  all  discerning  Northern  statesmen 
knew  —  that  the  people  devoted  to  the  Union  had  undertaken  quite 
enough,  in  their  endeavor  to  preserve  the  nation  from  destruction  by 
its  internal  foes.^ 

In  other  words,  Seward  seems  to  have  shared  to  the  full  in  the 
condition  of  mental  intoxication  in  which  the  loyal  North  in- 
dulged during  the  hundred  days  between  Smnter  and  Bull 
Run.  The  distrust  of  him,  therefore,  privately  entertained  at 
that  time  in  diplomatic  circles  and  the  departments  of 
foreign  affairs  was  well  founded;  far  more  so  than  was  gener- 
ally known,  or  in  America  even  surmised  until  the  Nicolay- 
Hay  revelations  of  twenty  years  later.  Lord  Lyons,  however, 
at  once  advised  Earl  Russell  of  Seward's  scheme  in  the 
Declaration  of  Paris  riiove.  In  a  despatch  dated  June  4th, 
and  received  in  London  June  14th,  he  wrote: 

"Itisprobable  that  M.Ada.s»ay,befo.etMs  despatch  .each.^ 

your  Lordship,  have  offered,  on  the  part  of  this  Government,  to  ad- 
here to  Art.  I  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris  as  well  as  to  the  others  and 
thus  to  declare  privateering  to  be  abolished.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
this  adherence  wUl  be  offered  in  the  expectation  that  it  will  bind  the 
Governments  accepting  it  to  treat  the  privateers  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy  as  pirates.  ...  At  the  present  moment,  however,  the 
privateers  are  in  full  activity,  and  have  met  with  considerable  suc- 
cess. It  is  not,  therefore,  to  be  expected  that  the  Southern  Confed- 
eracy will  reHnquish  the  employment  of  them,  otherwise  than  on 
compulsion  or  in  return  for  some  great  concession  from  France  and 
England."  He  further  added  this  caution:  "It  seems  to  me  to  be 
far  from  certain  that  the  United  States  Congress  would  ratify  the 
abolition  of  privateering;  nor  do  I  suppose  that  the  Cabinet  will  abide 
by  its  proposal  when  it  finds  that  it  will  gain  nothing  towards  the 
suppression  of  the  Southern  privateering  by  doing  so." 

*  Rhodes,  m.  424. 


/ 


30 

The  ultimate  purpose  of  Seward's  move  on  the  international 
chess-board  was,  therefore,  understood  in  the  British  Foreign 
Office;  and,  of  course,  Earl  Russell  did  not  propose  to  be 
unwittingly  a  victim  of  it.  Accordingly,  under  date  of  July 
12,  1 86 1,  he  was  thus  writing  to  Edward  Everett  in  Boston, 
knowing  well  that  the  latter  was  in  correspondence  with  Mr. 
Adams  in  London: 

'I  respect  the  unanimous  feeling  of  the  North,  and  still  more  the 
resolution  not  to  permit  the  extension  of  Slavery  which  led  to  the 
election  of  President  Lincoln.  But  with  regard  to  our  own  course 
I  must  say  something  more.  There  were  according  to  your  account 
eight  millions  of  freemen  in  the  Slave  States.  Of  these  millions  up- 
wards of  five  have  been  for  some  time  in  open  revolt  against  the 
President  and  Congress  of  the  United  States.  It  is  not  our  practice 
to  treat  five  millions  of  freemen  as  pirates,  and  to  hang  their  sailors 
if  they  stop  our  merchantmen.  But  unless  we  meant  to  treat  them 
as  pirates  and  to  hang  them,  we  could  not  deny  them  belligerent 
rights.  This  is  what  you  and  we  did  in  the  case  of  the  South  American 
Colonies  of  Spain.  Your  own  President  and  Courts  of  Law  decided 
this  question  in  the  case  of  Venezuela.^ 

^  Adams  Mss.  Enclosure  in  Everett  to  Adams,  August  20,  1861.  Proceed- 
ings, XLV.  76,  77. 

[In  view  of  the  correspondence  which  is  known  to  have  passed  between  the 
Premier  and  the  Editor  of  the  Times  just  prior  to  the  Trent  affair,  four  months 
later,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that  the  Times  was  at  this  juncture  directly  inspired  from 
Government  sources.  In  its  editorial  columns  of  the  issue  of  May  isth,  the 
following  comment  appeared  on  the  Proclamation  of  Belligerency,  then  just 
published: 

"The  North  sees  in  the  Southern  States  rebels  against  its  authority,  and  will 
probably,  at  first  at  least,  decline  to  recognize  the  validity  of  Letters  of  Marque 
issued  imder  the  authority  of  President  Jefferson  Davis.  The  South  will  not  be 
slow  to  retahate,  and  it  may  easily  be  anticipated  that  there  will  be  a  disposition 
on  both  sides  to  treat  those  crews  of  privateers  who  may  fall  into  their  hands  as 
pirates,  to  whom  the  hcense  they  bear  gives  no  protection.  What  would  be  the 
conduct  of  the  British  Government  under  such  circumstances?  Suppose  an 
Englishman  taken  on  board  a  Southern  privateer  to  be  hanged  under  a  sentence 
of  a  Court  of  Admiralty  at  New  York,  —  what  would  be  the  conduct  of  the  Gov- 
ernment in  this  country?  The  answer  of  the  Proclamation  to  the  question  is  by 
no  means  encouraging.  Persons  enlisting  in  such  service  will  do  so  at  their  peril 
and  of  their  own  wrong,  and  will  in  no  wise  obtain  any  protection  from  us  against 
any  liabilities  or  penal  consequences.  It  will  be  observed  that  in  this  place  the 
word  'such'  is  omitted.  The  liabilities  and  penal  consequences  are  not  confined 
to  those  imder  the  Act  or  under  the  law  of  nations,  but  are  left  wide  and  unde- 
fined, as  if  on  purpose  to  impress  the  very  case  we  are  supposing.  .  .  .  We  have 
done  our  duty  if  we  distinctly  point  out  that  those  Englishmen  who,  in  defiance 
of  the  laws  of  their  country  and  the  solemn  warnings  of  their  Sovereign,  rush  into 
this  execrable  conflict  will  do  so  with  direct  notice  that  if  they  meet  with  enemies 


\ 


31 

Meanwhile,  Seward,  by  what  has  always,  for  some  reason  not 
at  once  apparent,  passed  for  a  very  astute  proceeding,^  caused 
a  transfer  of  the  whole  negotiation  from  Washington  to  London 
and  Paris,  —  that  is,  he  refused  to  see  the  representatives  of 
France  and  Great  Britain  together,  and  under  instructions  act- 
ing jointly  in  reference  to  the  accession  of  the  United  States 
to  the  Declaration  of  Paris;  and  by  so  doing  caused  the  ne- 
gotiations to  pass  out  of  his  own  hands  into  those  of  his 
two  representatives  in  Europe,  Mr.  Adams  and  Mr.  Dayton.^ 
They,  July  6th,  were  instructed  accordingly,  and  proceeded  to 
negotiate. 

Dates  and  conditions  must  again  be  borne  in  mind.  The 
instructions  to  negotiate  on  the  basis  of  the  treaty  of  Paris 
"pure  and  simple,"  bore  date  of  July  6th,  just  fifteen  days 
before  the  battle  of  Bull  Run,  and  when  the  movement  which 
led  to  that  disaster  was  fully  decided  upon  and  in  active  prepa- 
ration.   So  far  as  foreign  relations  were  concerned,  Seward  was 

as  reckless  and  merciless  as  themselves,  they  must  bear  the  fate  that  awaits  them, 
without  any  hope  that  the  country  whose  laws  they  have  broken  will  stretch  forth 
her  arm  to  shield  them  from  the  consequences  of  their  own  folly  and  wickedness. 
.  .  .  The  warning  has  been  given  in  time;  we  hope  and  beheve  that  it  v/ill  prove 
effectual,  and  that  the  horrors  of  a  civil  war  between  brethren  will  not  be  aggra- 
vated by  the  vmcaUed-for  intervention  of  the  subjects  of  the  parent  State." 

It  would  thus  appear  that  from  the  commencement  Great  Britain  was  upon  its 
guard.  Under  the  circumstances,  it  was  not  proposed  to  protect  British  subjects 
therein  concerned  in  case  privateering  was  visited  with  the  penalty  of  piracy.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  British  Government  did  not  propose,  through  a  deferred  adhe- 
sion to  the  Treaty  of  Paris  by  the  United  States,  to  be  drawn  into  a  denial  of 
right  of  asylum  to  a  recognized  belligerent.    Ed.] 

^  Seward  at  Washington,  n.  581;  Bancroft,  Seward,  n.  181. 

*  "Mr.  Seward  said  at  once  that  he  could  not  receive  from  us  a  communica- 
tion founded  on  the  assumption  that  the  Southern  rebels  were  to  be  regarded  as 
belligerents;  that  this  was  a  determination  to  which  the  Cabinet  had  come  deliber- 
ately; that  he  could  not  admit  that  recent  events  had  in  any  respect  altered  the 
relations  between  foreign  Powers  and  the  Southern  States;  that  he  would  not 
discuss  the  question  with  us,  but  that  he  should  give  instructions  to  the  United 
States  Ministers  in  London  and  Paris,  who  would  be  thus  enabled  to  state  the 
reasons  for  the  course  taken  by  their  Government  to  your  Lordship  and  to  M. 
Thouvenel,  if  you  should  be  desirous  to  hear  them. 

"'That  is  to  say,'  observed  M.  Mercier,  'you  prefer  to  treat  the  question  in 
Paris  and  London  rather  than  with  us  here.'  ' 

"'Just  so,'  said  Mr.  Seward;  and  he  proceeded  to  tell  us  that  he  should  be 
very  much  obliged  if  we  would,  on  our  side,  leave  with  him,  for  his  own  use  only, 
our  instructions,  in  order  that  he  might  be  able  to  write  his  despatches  to  London 
and  Paris  with  a  certainty  that  he  did  not  misapprehend  the  views  of  our  Govern- 
ments."   Lord  Lyons  to  Lord  John  Russell,  June  17,  1861. 


32 

then  still  riding  a  very  high  horse,  —  the  No.  lo  charger,  in 
fact,  he  had  mounted  on  the  21st  of  the  previous  May.  We 
get  a  vivid  and  exceedingly  life-like  glimpse  of  him,  his  attitude 
and  way  of  talking  at  just  this  juncture  through  Russell's 
Diary.  The  Times  special  correspondent  there  describes  how 
on  July  4th  —  while  the  despatches  ordering  the  Declaration  of 
Paris  negotiations  to  proceed  were  yet  on  Mr.  Seward's  table, 
to  go  out  two  days  later  —  he  (Russell)  called  at  the  Depart- 
ment of  State.  He  reports  the  impression  in  the  course  of  that 
interview  made  on  him  by  Seward,  recording  his  language 
thus: 

"  We  are  dealing  with  an  insurrection  within  our  own  country,  of 
our  own  people,  and  the  Government  of  Great  Britain  have  thought 
fit  to  recognize  that  insurrection  before  we  were  able  to  bring  the 
strength  of  the  Union  to  bear  against  it,  by  conceding  to  it  the  status 
of  belligerent.  Although  we  rnight  justly  complain  of  such  an  un- 
friendly act  in  a  manner  that  might  injure  the  friendly  relations  be- 
tween the  two  countries,  we  do  not  desire  to  give  any  excuse  for 
foreign  interference;  although  we  do  not  hesitate,  in  case  of  necessity, 
to  resist  it  to  the  uttermost,  we  have  less  to  fear  from  a  foreign  war 
than  any  country  in  the  world.  If  any  European  Power  provokes  a 
war,  we  shall  not  shrink  from  It.  A  contest  between  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  States  would  wrap  the  world  in  fire,  and  at  the  end 
it  would  not  be  the  United  States  which  would  have  to  lament  the 
results  of  the  conflict." 

I  could  not  but  admire  the  confidence  —  may  I  say  the  coolness? 
—  of  the  statesman  who  sat  in  his  modest  little  room*  within  the  sound 
of  the  enemy's  guns,  in  a  capital  menaced  by  their  forces  who  spoke 
so  fearlessly  of  war  with  a  Power  which  could  have  blotted  out  the 
paper  blockade  of  the  Southern  ports  and  coast  in  a  few  hours,  and, 
in  conjunction  with  the  Southern  armies,  have  repeated  the  occupa- 
tion and  destruction  of  the  capital. 

To  the  historical  investigator  of  191 2  the  foregoing  account 
of  a  familiar  talk  with  Secretary  Seward  in  July,  1861,  just  a 
fortnight  before  the  disaster  at  Bull  Run,  is  distinctly  sugges- 
tive; as  also  is  Russell's  comment  on  what  then  passed.  To 
us  who,  seeing  before  and  after,  look  back  on  the  situation  at 
that  period,  it  is  curious  to  consider  what  possibihties  were  in 
the  mind  of  Secretary  Seward  when  he  thus,  speaking  for  the 
United  States,  calmly  contemplated  the  contingency  of  a  war 


33 

with  the  two  leading  naval  powers  of  Europe,  imposed  upon 
the  somewhat  gigantic  task  of  suppressing  a  domestic  insurrec- 
tion in  which  eleven  distinct  pohtical  communities  were  con- 
cerned, representing  eight  millions  of  population.  We  now 
know,  and  it  would  seem  as  if  Secretary  Seward  could  at  the 
time  hardly  have  failed  to  realize,  that  the  task  of  suppressing 
the  insurrection  alone  taxed  to  the  utmost  both  the  strength 
and  the  spirit  of  persistence  of  that  portion  of  the  United  States 
which  remained  loyal  to  the  Union.  We  also  now  appreciate 
the  strategic  fact  that  every  vital  military  operation  involved 
in  that  gigantic  effort  depended  on  maritime  control.^  From 
the  capture  of  New  Orleans  by  Farragut,  through  Sherman's 
march  to  the  sea  to  Lee's  surrender  at  Appomattox,  it  may 
with  safety  be  asserted  that,  with  the  exception  of  the  Vicks- 
burg  and  Chattanooga  operations,  there  was  not  one  even  con- 
siderable operation  which  would  have  been  possible  had  the 
national  government  been  unable  to  sustain  itself  as  the  domi- 
nant sea  power.  This,  as  respects  the  domestic  situation.  And 
yet  in  July,  1861,  Secretary  Seward  did  not  hesitate  to  profess 
his  implicit  confidence  in  the  ability  of  the  national  government 
both  to  overcome  the  Confederacy  and  successfully  to  meet  any 
possible  combination  of  European  nations,  or,  as  he  himself 
put  it,  to  "suppress  rebelUon  and  defeat  invasion  besides."  ^ 
What  then  had  he  in  mind  when  so  frequently  indulging  in  the 
metaphorical  prediction  that  "a  contest  between  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  States  would  wrap  the  world  in  fire"?  This 
prediction,  too,  he  now  uttered  when  actively  negotiating  for 
the  accession  of  the  United  States  to  what  was  known  as  the 
Declaration  of  Paris,  by  which  "privateering  is  and  remains 
aboHshed." 

I  am  not  aware  that  Secretary  Seward  ever,  either  in  his 
correspondence  or  in  any  conversation  of  which  we  have  a 
record,  enlarged  upon  this  subject  in  detail.  In  the  course  of 
a  despatch  to  Mr.  Adams,  written  on  the  morrow  of  Bull  Run, 
he  thus  expressed  himself:  "If,  through  error,  on  whatever 
side,  this  civil  contention  shall  transcend  the  national  bounds 
and  involve  foreign  States,  the  energies  of  all  commercial  na- 
tions, including  our  own,  will  necessarily  be  turned  to  war,  and 
a  general  carnival  of  the  adventurous  and  the  reckless  of  all 

}  2  Proceedings,  xrx.  311-326.  '  Barnes,  Thurlow  Weed,  n.  410. 


34 

countries,  at  the  cost  of  the  existing  commerce  of  the  worid, 
must  ensue."  ^    This  is  suggestive;   but  a  more  detailed  and 

^  To  trace  conjecturally  the  line  of  thought  or  reasoning  pursued  by  Seward  in 
the  presence  of  the  quite  imforeseeable  phases  assumed  by  the  course  of  events  at 
this  juncture  has  a  distinct  psychological  interest,  and  is,  moreover,  essential  to 
any  correct  understanding  of  his  acts  and  utterances.  Essentially  an  imaginative 
man,  Seward  had  also,  as  Bancroft  points  out  (n.  505),  a  strong  emotional  and 
sentimental  side  to  his  character.  To  this  was  largely  due  his  unbounded  faith  in 
the  spirit  of  nationality  in  the  American  people,  and  his  impulse  to  an  appeal  to 
patriotism  in  presence  of  a  domestic  complication.  This  faith  was  in  him  un- 
bounded, and  found  frequent  and  at  times  eloquent  expression.  It  inspired,  we 
know,  the  fine  closing  sentiment  of  Lincoln's  first  inaugural,  with  its  poetic 
reference  to  the  "mystic  chords  of  memory"  swelling  the  "chorus  of  the  Union." 
Nicolay-Hay,  m.  323,  343.  Later  it  caused  Seward  to  write  exhortingly  to  Mr. 
Sumner  in  the  midst  of  a  most  acute  crisis  in  our  foreign  relations:  "Rouse  the 
nationality  of  the  American  people.  It  is  an  instinct  upon  which  you  can  always 
rely,  even  when  the  conscience  that  ought  never  to  slumber  is  drugged  to  death.' ' 
A  passage  of  similar  tenor  is  quoted  by  Bancroft  (u.  183)  from  a  despatch  to  Day- 
ton: "Down  deep  in  the  heart  of  the  American  people  —  deeper  than  the  love  of 
trade,  or  of  freedom  —  deeper  than  the  attachment  to  any  local  or  sectional  inter- 
est, or  partisan  pride  or  individual  ambition  —  deeper  than  any  other  sentiment 
—  is  that  one  out  of  which  the  Constitution  of  this  Union  arose  —  namely,  Ameri- 
can Independence  —  independence  of  all  foreign  control,  alliance,  or  influence." 
With  this  faith  in  the  possibiUty  of  an  appeal  to  what  he  considered  an  irresistible 
power  when  aroused,  Seward's  memory  insensibly  went  back  to  the  traditions  of 
the  War  of  181 2,  and  his  own  impressions  based  on  features  of  that  struggle  and 
recollection  of  its  phases  and  incidents;  for,  bom  in  May,  1801,  Seward  was  at 
the  impressionable  age  of  fourteen  when  the  war  closed.  The  part  then  played  by 
the  American  privateers  is  familiar  history.  Reverting  to  that  national  ex- 
perience, Seward,  like  President  Buchanan,  appears  to  have  reasoned  somewhat 
as  follows: 

(i)  "  Our  most  effectual  means  of  annoying  a  great  naval  power  upon  the  ocean 
is  by  granting  letters  of  marque  and  reprisal."     {Supra,  8.)    < 

(2)  In  certain  emergencies,  he  declared,  "we  must  let  loose  our  privateers." 
(Welles,  Diary,  i.  437.) 

(3)  Finding  their  way  to  every  sea,  these  privateers  will  "wrap  the  whole 
world  in  flames.  No  power  so  remote  that  she  will  not  feel  the  fire  of  our  battle 
and  be.  burned  by  our  conflagration."  (Russell,  My  Diary,  December  16, 
1861.) 

(4)  Consequently,  any  struggle  in  which  we  may  be  involved  will  be  "dread- 
ful, but  the  end  will  be  sure  and  swift."     {Seward  at  Washington,  n.  575.) 

In  pursuing  some  such  line  of  reasoning,  and  in  reaching  this  conclusion, 
Seward,  as  is  now  obvious,  left  out  of  consideration  the  vital  fact  that  since  1815 
steam  had  replaced  canvas  in  naval  operations.  Jefferson  Davis  at  the  same 
time,  but  on  the  other  side,  made  the  same  mistake.  Sustained  privateering  was, 
therefore,  possible  in  1861  only  for  vessels  propelled  by  steam.  This  the  Con- 
federacy early  learned.  So  far  as  appears,  it  does  not  seen!  to  have  occurred  to 
Secretary  Seward  that  in  case  of  hostilities  with  the  leading  nations  of  Europe 
practically  every  foreign  port  in  the  world  wovdd  have  been  closed  to  American 
vessels.  It  would  have  been  impossible  for  them  to  hold  the  sea.  The  blockade 
of  the  Confederacy  would  have  been  raised,  and  the  loyal  States  would  have  been 
in  turn  blockaded.    Under  these  circumstances,  the  American  privateer,  coidd  it 


J 


35 

fairly  adequate  idea  of  what  was  then  in  Seward's  mind  can 
perhaps  be  derived  from  the  Diary  of  Mr.  Welles,  who  himself 
seems  to  have  participated  to  a  somewhat  inexplicable  extent 
in  the  highly  conflagratory  confidence  of  his  colleague.  Secretary 
Welles  certainly  did  not  as  a  habit  share  the  views  of  Mr. 
Seward;  but  none  the  less,  writing  at  a  period  two  years  later 
and  even  more  critical,  he  on  this  "wrap-the-world-in-fire" 
topic  thus  expressed  himself: 

A  war  with  England  would  be  a  serious  calamity  to  us,  but  scarcely 
less  serious  to  her.  She  cannot  afford  a  maritime  conflict  with  us, 
even  in  our  troubles,  nor  will  she.  We  can  live  within  ourselves  if 
worse  comes  to  worse.  Our  territory  is  compact,  facing  both  oceans, 
and  in  latitudes  which  furnish  us  in  abundance  without  foreign  aid 
all  the  necessaries  and  most  of  the  luxuries  of  life;  but  England  has 
a  colonial  system  which  was  once  her  strength,  but  is  her  weakness  in 
these  days  and  with  such  a  people  as  our  countrymen  to  contend  with. 
Her  colonies  are  scattered  over  the  globe.  We  could,  with  our  public 
and  private  armed  ships,  interrupt  and  destroy  her  communication 
with  her  dependencies,  her  colonies,  on  which  she  is  as  dependent  for 
prosperity  as  they  on  her.  I  was  therefore  in  favor  of  meeting  her 
face  to  face,  asking  only  what  is  right  but  submitting  to  nothing  that 
is  wrong. 

If  the  late  despatches  are  to  be  taken  as  the  policy  she  intends  to 
pursue,  it  means  war,  and  if  war  is  to  come  it  looks  to  me  as  of  a 
magnitude  greater  than  the  world  has  ever  experienced,  —  as  if  it 

have  kept  the  sea,  would  have  had  no  port  of  a  foreign  country  in  which  to  get 
supplies  or  into  which  to  send  its  prizes;  and  the  ports  of  its  own  country,  where 
machinery  could  have  been  repaired  and  coal  obtained,  would  have  been  closed. 
Hence  every  inducement  as  well  as  facility  for  privateering  would  have  ceased 
to  exist.  The  ports  of  the  Confederacy  would  meanwhile  have  been  opened,  with 
a  consequent  unobstructed  movement  of  cotton  to  Europe,  and  a  counter  un- 
obstructed movement  of  arms,  munitions  and  stores  to  the  Confederacy. 

Under  such  circumstances,  it  would  seem  as  if  Secretary  Seward  indulged  in  a 
delusion  no  less  deceptive  and  dangerous  than  that  at  the  same  time  indulged  in 
by  Jefferson  Davis  over  the  potency  of  cotton  as  a  finally  controUing  factor  in 
modem  politics  as  well  as  trade.  The  maintenance  of  the  blockade  of  the  Con- 
federacy, in  fact,  was  essential  to  the  success  of  the  national  government;  and, 
whatever  else  might  have  resulted  from  a  foreign  intervention,  had  it  occurred 
during  the  Civil  War,  the  United  States  would  have  lost  its  control  of  the  sea  and 
the  blockade  of  the  Confederacy  would  have  been  raised.  It  is  diflScult  now  to  see 
how  in  such  case  the  cause  of  the  Union  could  have  been  sustained.  If  his  reasoning 
was  really  that  indicated  by  his  utterances,  official  and  familiar,  and  they  were  not 
for  mere  effect,  Mr.  Seward  would  on  this  subject  seem  to  have  been  wrong  in  his 
every  premise.  He  left  out  of  his  equation  not  only  steam  and  electricity  but  a  half 
century  of  scientific  development. 


36 

would  eventuate  in  the  upheaval  of  nations,  the  overthrow  of  gov- 
ernments and  dynasties.  The  sympathies  of  the  mass  of  mankind 
would  be  with  us  rather  than  with  the  decaying  dynasties  and  the 
old  effete  governments.  Not  unlikely  the  conflict  thus  commenced 
would  kindle  the  torch  of  civil  war  throughout  Christendom,  and  even 
nations  beyond.^ 

The  condition  of  affairs  opens  a  vast  field.  Should  a  commercial 
war  commence,  it  will  affect  the  whole  world.  The  police  of  the  seas 
will  be  broken  up,  and  the  peaceful  intercourse  of  nations  destroyed. 
Those  governments  and  peoples  that  have  encouraged  and  are  foster- 
ing our  dissensions  will  themselves  reap  the  bitter  fruits  of  their 
malicious  intrigues.  In  this  great  conflict,  thus  wickedly  begun  there 
will  be  likely  to  ensue  an  uprising  of  the  nations  that  will  shatter 
existing  governments  and  overthrow  the  aristocracies  and  dynasties 
not  only  of  England  but  of  Europe.^ 

Two  men,  mentally  so  differently  constituted,  thus  concurred 
in  what,  involving  as  it  did  the  mastery  of  the  sea,  cannot  but 
impress  the  modern  investigator  as  a  singularly  visionary  and 
delusive  hallucination.  Nevertheless,  it  would  seem  that 
W.  H.  Russell  was  right  when,  on  another  occasion,  he  debated 
in  his  own  mind  whether  Secretary  Seward  believed  in  the 
somewhat  "tall"  talk  in  which  on  this  subject  he  was  apt  to 
indulge.  After  meditating  the  proposition  carefully,  Russell 
concluded  that  the  Secretary  really  did  have  faith  in  the  views 
he  expressed.^    Under  the  circumstances,  it  is  difficult  to  avoid 

1  Diary,  i.  258-259. 

'  Diary,  i.  251.  The  following  passage  from  a  speech  delivered  in  the  House  of 
Representatives  by  Thaddeus  Stevens,  of  Pennsylvania,  December  30,  1861,  is 
of  a  similar  tenor.  Mr.  Stevens  was  chairman  of  the  Committee  of  Ways  and 
Means,  and  the  entire  speech  is  curiously  suggestive  of  the  rhodomontade  very 
generally  indulged  in  at  that  stage  of  the  conflict: 

"War  is  always  a  mighty  evil.  With  England  it  would  be  especially  deplor- 
able. But  war  with  all  nations  is  better  than  national  dishonour  and  disgrace. 
We  should  be  better  able  to  meet  England  in  arms  with  the  rebel  States  in  alli- 
ance with  her  than  if  they  were  still  loyal.  They  have  a  vastly  extended  defence- 
less frontier  easily  accessible  by  a  maritime  enemy.  Most  of  the  army  and  navy 
of  the  nation  during  the  last  war  were  required  for  its  defence.  If  we  were  relieved 
from  protecting  them,  we  could  use  aU  our  forces  in  other  quarters.  We  should 
then  do  what  we  ought  long  since  to  have  done  —  organize  their  domestic  enemies 
against  them,  who  would  find  themselves  and  their  allies  suJBicient  employment 
at  home  without  invading  the  North.  If  such  a  deplorable  war  should  be  forced 
upon  us  we  should  do  what  we  ought  to  have  done  in  the  last  war  —  rectify  our 
Eastern  and  Northern  boundaries;  and  our  banner  would  wave  over  freemen, 
and  none  but  repubUcan  freemen,  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the  Arctic  Ocean, 
and  from  the.  Bay  of  St.  Lawrence  to  Puget  Sound." 

'  My  Diary,  Ap^  4>  1861. 


37 

the  conclusion  reached  by  Secretary  Welles  in  other  connections, 
that  Secretary  Seward  was  in  his  mental  make-up  essentially 
visionary  and  erratic.^  He  was  also,  as  Mr.  Sumner  asserted, 
somewhat  wanting  in  what  is  known  as  hard,  common  sense.^ 
Nevertheless,  these  characteristics  again  must  be  taken  with 
quahfications.  While  Seward  was  visionary  and  to  an  excep- 
tional and  unfortunate  degree  addicted  to  prophetic  utterance, 
yet,  as  a  saving  grace,  he  rarely  allowed  his  visions  to  commit 
him  to  any  action  involving  irretrievable  disaster;  while,  as 
respects  his  erratic  tendencies,  when  boldly  challenged  he  be- 
came, as  Mr.  Welles  asserted,  "timid,  uncertain,  and  distrust- 
ful";^ and,  "while  thus  lacking  in  a  dangerous  tenacity  of 
purpose,  he  was  naturally  disposed  to  oblique  and  indirect 
movements.  ""With  an  almost  phenomenal  quickness  of  appre- 
hension, however,  he  possessed  "wonderful  facility  and  aptness 
in  adapting  himself  to  circumstances  and  exigencies  which  he 
could  not  control,  and  a  fertility  in  expedients,  with  a  dexterity 
in  adopting  or  dismissing  plans  and  projected  schemes,  unsur- 
passed." ^  Very  similar  conclusions  in  these  respects  were 
reached  by  Mr.  Bancroft,  when  he  wrote  in  his  Life:  "There 
was  in  Seward's  nature  so  much  that  was  emotional  and  senti- 
mental aside  from  what  was  subtle,  and  it  was  so  common  for 
him  to  seek  to  accomplish  his  purpose  by  indirect  means,  that 
it  is  often  impossible  to  distinguish  impulse  from  calculation."  ^ 

Reverting  now  to  the  narrative,  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind 
that,  at  the  very  hour  Russell's  description  of  the  call  at  the 
State  Department  was  recorded,  the  crisis  was  impending; 
seventeen  days  later  only  "the  strength  of  the  Union"  was  to  be 
brought  to  bear  against  the  Confederacy,  with  results  which 
would  render  it  difficult  to  deny  the  latter  the  status  of  a  bel- 
ligerent. Our  somewhat  hastily  improvised  and  extremely  vain- 
glorious martial  array  was  to  be  chased  back  to  Washington  in 
panic  flight  by  "the  power  existing  in  pronunciamento  only." 

So  much  for  the  situation  as,  in  the  period  of  this  episode,  it 
affected  Seward's  mental  operations  and  plans  of  procedure. 
There  can,  I  think,  be  no  reasonable  doubt  of  the  program  he 
had  in  mmd  up  to  Bull  Run;  but,  five  months  later,  that  pro- 
gram and  the  sequence  of  events  were  clearly  set  forth  by 

^  Welles,  Diary,  I.  ii,  275.  2  Ih.,  285.  »  Ih.,  153,  154. 

*  Welles,  Lincoln  and  Seward,  43.  6  Bancroft,  11.  505. 


38 

Lyons  in  a  despatch  to  Earl  Russell,  dated  December  6,  1861, 
and  received  in  London  December  25tli,  at  the  very  crisis  of 
the  subsequent  Trent  affair.    Lyons  wrote: 

A  great  deal  of  the  space  [in  the  diplomatic  correspondence  accom- 
panying the  President's  message  that  day  pubKshed]  devoted  to  [Eng- 
land and  France]  is  occupied  by  the  negotiations  concerning  the 
adherence  of  the  United  States  to  the  Declaration  of  Paris.  Mr. 
Adams  writes  frequently  and  at  great  length  concerning  his  mis- 
apprehension of  your  Lorcjship's  intentions  as  to  transferring  the 
negotiation  to  Washington^  ^  The  simple  explanation  of  this  misap- 
prehension is,  that  Mr.  Seward  refused  to  see  the  despatch  in  which 
your  Lordship's  proposals  were  made.  Your  Lordship  will  recollect 
that  Mr.  Seward,  having  been  permitted  by  M.  Mercier  and  me  to 
read  and  consider  in  private  that  despatch,  and  a  despatch  of  a  sim- 
ilar tenor  from  the  Governmentv  of  France,  refused  to  receive  the 
formal  copies  we  were  instructed  to  place  in  his  hands,  or  to  take  any 
ofi&cial  notice  of  their  contents.  .  .  .  From  several  of  the  papers  now 
published,  it  appears  that  it  was  only  an  act  of  common  prudence, 
on  the  part  of  the  Governments  of  Great  Britain  and  France,  not  to 
accept  the  accession  of  this  country  to  the  Declaration  of  Paris,  with- 
out stating  distinctly  what  obligations  they  intended  by  doing  so  to 
assume  with  regard  to  the  Seceded  States.  Little  doubt  can  remain, 
after  reading  the  papers,  that  the  accession  was  offered  solely  with 
a  view  to  the  effect  it  would  have  on  the  privateering  operations 
of  the  Southern  States;  and  that  a  refusal  on  the  part  of  England 
and  France,  after  having  accepted  the  accession,  to  treat  the  South- 
ern privateers  as  pirates,  would  have  been  made  a  serious  grievance, 
if  not  a  grornid  of  quarrel.  ...  In  the  letter  from  Mr.  Seward  to  Mr. 
Dayton  of  the  2 2d  June,  the  following  passage  occurs:  "We  shall 
continue  to  regard  France  as  respecting  our  Government  until  she 
practically  acts  in  violation  of  her  friendly  obligations  to  us,  as 
we  understand  them.  When  she  does  that,  it  will  be  time  enough 
to  inquire  whether  if  we  accede  to  the  Treaty  of  Paris  she  could, 
after  that,  allow  pirates  upon  our  commerce  shelter  in  her  ports,  and 
what  our  remedy  should  then  be.    We  have  no  fear  on  this  head." 

Had,  therefore,  the  movement  to  Bull  Run  resulted  differ- 
ently, as  Mr.  Seward  confidently  believed  it  would,  he  had  it 
in  mind  then  to  assume  an  aggressive  attitude,  boldly  disclos- 
ing his  ultimate  object.  He  would  insist  on  United  States 
sovereignty,  and  the  outlawing  of  all  Confederate  cruisers  as 
pirates  under  the  laws  of  the  United  States  become  operative 


39 

as  respects  them  by  virtue  of  the  adhesion  of  that  country  to 
the  Declaration  of  Paris. 

But,  weeks  before  the  21st  of  July,  and  its  catastrophe,  the 
Declaration  of  Paris  negotiation  had  passed  out  of  Seward's 
hands  into  the  hands  of  Messrs.  Adams  and  Dayton. 
Their  personaUties  and  views  of  the  situation  have  next  to  be 
considered. 

Mr.  Adams  seems  to  have  approached  the  negotiation  in 
perfect  good  faith,  holding  that  the  articles  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Paris  were  right  in  themselves,  constituting  a  distinct 
advance  in  international  law;  and,  being  right,  they  should 
be  acceded  to  by  the  United  States  on  their  merits  and  in  good 
faith.  He  did  not  contemplate  an  ulterior  move;  had  no  eye 
to  possible  impending  compHcations;  nor  did  he  apparently 
grasp  Seward's  scheme  in  all  its  consequences.  He,  therefore, 
proceeded  in  a  straightforward  way  to  negotiate  the  accession 
of  the  United  States  to  the  Paris  Declaration.  In  so  doing  he 
acted  as  it  was  incumbent  on  a  diplomatic  agent  to  act.  He 
carried  out  his  instructions  in  a  spirit  of  obedience,  and  with 
unquestioning  loyalty  to  his  chief. 

Mr.  Dayton  otherwise  viewed  the  thing  proposed.  He  ap-, 
prehended  early  trouble  between  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain,  and  considered  that  in  such  contingency  privateering 
was  a  weapon  of  aggressive  warfare  which  the  United  States 
should  on  no  account  abandon.  He  was,  therefore,  most  re- 
luctant* to  carry  out  his  instructions,  and  did  so  only  when 
they  reached  him  in  positive  and  explicit  terms. 

What  poHcy  and  scheme  of  subsequent,  alternative  action 
were  in  Secretary  Seward's  mind  when  he  forwarded  those  in- 
structions, looking  to  the  adherence  of  the  United  States  to 
the  Articles  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris  "pure  and  simple" 
can  only  now  be  matter  of  surmise.  One  thing  would  seem  ap- 
parent. Secretary  Seward  at  this  juncture  looked  forward  to 
serious  foreign  complications  as  at  least  probable.  Neither  in 
case  of  such  compHcations  does  he  seem  to  have  proposed  in 
any  event  so  to  commit  the  United  States  that  in  case  of  emer- 
gency a  recourse  could  not  be  had  to  privateering  as  an  effective 
weapon  in  warfare,  especially  in  the  case  of  Great  Britain.  On 
the  contrary,  both  in  his  own  utterances  and  in  the  Diary 
records  of  Secretary  Welles  a  resort  to  letters  of  marque  in 


40 

the  event  of  a  foreign  complication  when  the  world  would  be 
"wrapped  in  fire"  seems  to  be  assumed  as  a  matter  of  course.^ 

In  the  absence  of  any  direct  avowal,  which  could,  under  the 
circumstances,  hardly  be  looked  for,  the  inevitable  inference, 
therefore,  is  that  in  such  eventuality  the  American  Secretary 
of  State,  with  his  "wonderful  facility  and  aptness  in  adapting 
himself  to  circumstances  and  exigencies  which  he  could  not 
control,"  and  his  "fertiHty  in  expedients,  combined  with  dex- 
terity in  adopting  or  dismissing  plans  and  projected  schemes,"  ^ 
proposed  to  extricate  himself  from  a  commitment  then  become 
undesirable  by  asserting  that  through  their  refusal  to  recognize 
the  cruisers  of  the  Confederacy  as  pirates  the  foreign  powers 
had  themselves  disregarded  the  Declaration  of  Paris  with  re- 
spect to  privateering,  thus  releasing  the  United  States  from  its 
obligations. 

Through  such  confusion  of  thought  and  jugghng  of  phrases 
the  Secretary  of  State  apparently  saw  a  path  clear  before  him 
in  any  eventuality.  The  United  States  was  to  find  itself  free 
to  a  recourse  to  what  in  the  absence  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris 
had  always  been  legarded  as  a  legitimate  method  of  warfare. 
As  usual,  the  onus  of  the  violated  obligation  would  have  been 
transferred  to  the  other  parties  thereto. 

The  British  representative  at  Washington,  Lord  Lyons,  was 
the  only  dramatis  persona  in  these  negotiations  remaining  to  be 
considered.  Of  him  it  may  fairly  be  said  that  his  course  through- 
out seems  to  furnish  no  ground  for  criticism.  Placed  in  a  most 
difficult  position,  and  apparently  at  times  treated  by  Mr. 
Seward  with  scant  personal  and  official  courtesy,  he  bore  himself 
with  quiet  dignity,  preserving  an  even  temper  and  performing 
admirably  his  duties.  His  reports  and  despatches  have  not  as 
yet  been  made  accessible  in  full;  but,  so  far  as  appears,  acting 
loyally  to  his  chief  and  pajdng  obedience,  both  strict  and  tact- 
ful, to  his  instructions,  he  kept  the  British  Foreign  Office  accu- 
rately and  fully  informed  as  to  the  course  of  events.  Moreover, 
he  seems  to  have  understood  his  opponent,  correctly  divining 
his  plan  of  operations  and  ulterior  purpose.    That  he  distrusted 

^  A  most  annoying  and  destructive  weapon  of  warfare,  the  "wolves  of  the  sea" 
were  bitterly  denounced  by  the  American  Secretary  of  the  Navy  at  the  very  time 
when,  in  case  of  a  conflict  with  Great  Britain,  recourse  would,  he  declared,  be  had 
to  "letters  of  marque  and  every  means  in  our  power."    Diary,  i.  250. 

'  Welles,  Lincoln  and  Seward,  43. 


41 

V 

Mr.  Seward  and  considered  him  very  capable  of  covert  dealing 

was  well  understood  in  Washington.  This  was  the  case  to  such  a 
degree  that  Mr.  Sumner  told  Secretary  Welles  that  the  British 
Minister  had  given  him  to  understand  that  he  was  "cautious 
and  careful  in  all  his  transactions"  with  the  Secretary,  and 
that  he  "made  it  a  point  to  reduce  all  matters  with  Seward  of 
a  pubHc  nature  to  writing."  ^  Nevertheless,  owing  doubtless 
to  his  tact,  good  temper,  and  the  confidence  in  himself  Lord 
Lyons  had  inspired,  Mr.  Welles  later  on  recorded  the  following 
belief:  "To  a  mortifying  extent  Lord  Lyons  shapes  and  directs, 
through  the  Secretary  of  State,  an  erroneous  poHcy  to  Jthis 
government.    This  is  humiliating,  but  true."  ^ 

That,  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Seward,  the  judgment  of  Gideon 
Welles  was  biased  and  almost  invariably  harsh  and  unfavor- 
able, is  apparent.  He  is  a  prejudiced  witness.  None  the  less, 
a  shrewd  and  incisive  judge  of  character,  and  a  very  honest 
man,  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy  saw  things  in  Lincoln's  cabinet 
from  the  inside,  —  his  sources  of  information  were  the  best  and 
most  direct.  That  he  was  misinformed  as  to  foreign  affairs 
and  not  infrequently  mistaken  as  well  as  rash  in  his  judgments 
concerning  them,  is  apparent  from  his  contemporaneous  records; 
and  yet,  making  all  possible  allowance  on  these  heads,  it  is  not 
easy  to  see  how  a  higher  official  tribute  than  that  here  paid  by 
him  could  well  have  been  paid  to  the  Minister  of  a  foreign  coun- 
try during  a  most  critical  period. 

Perhaps,  however,  the  best  resume  of  the  situation  in  June, 
1 86 1,  so  far  as  Lord  Lyons  was  concerned,  is  to  be  found  in  W.  IL 
Russell's  Diary.  He  there  (chapter  xliv)  records  the  fact  that 
returning  from  his  trip  through  the  Confederacy,  and  reaching 
Washington  on  the  3d  of  July,  he  found  Lord  Lyons  at  the  British 
Legation,  and  was  sorry  to  observe  that  he  looked  "rather  care- 
worn and  pale,"  As  a  result  of  what  he  then  learned  he  further 
stated  that  Mr.  Seward,  as  the  Southern  Confederacy  developed 
its  power,  assumed  ever  higher  ground,  and  became  more  ex- 
acting and  defiant.  He  went  on  as  follows,  referring  to  what  had 
recently  taken  place: 

Mr.  Seward  has  been  fretful,  irritable,  and  acrimonious;  and  it  is 
not  too  much  to  suppose  Mr.  Sumner  has  been  useful  in  allaying 

1  Welles,  Diary,  i.  288.  *  Diary,  i.  399,  409. 


42 

irritation.  A  certain  despatch  was  written  last  June,  which  amounted 
to  little  less  than  a  declaration  of  war  against  Great  Britain.  Most 
fortunately  the  President  was  induced  to  exercise  his  power.  The 
despatch  was  modified  though  not  without  opposition,  and  was  for- 
warded to  the  English  Minister  with  its  teeth  drawn.  Lord  Lyons, 
who  is  one  of  the  suavest  and  quietest  of  diplomatists,  has  found  it 
difficult,  I  fear,  to  maintain  personal  relations  with  Mr.  Seward  at 
times.  Two  despatches  have  been  prepared  for  Lord  John  Russell, 
which  could  have  had  no  result  but  to  lead  to  a  breach  of  the  peace, 
had  not  some  friendly  interpositor  succeeded  in  averting  the  wrath  of 
the  Foreign  Minister.^ 

So  far  as  the  second,  third  and  fourth  articles  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Paris  were  concerned,  they  in  the  negotiation  now 
carried  on  presented  no  diiiiiculty.  The  question  turned  wholly 
on  the  first,  —  that  is,  "Privateering  is  and  remains  abolished." 
As  respects  this,  the  battle  of  Bull  Run  entirely  changed  the 
diplomatic  situation.  After  July  21,  1 861,  it  was  practically 
out  of  the  question  to  deny  that  the  Confederates  were  bellig- 
erents, and,  on  land  or  sea,  to  be  treated  as  such.  Never- 
theless, the  attempted  confusion  of  Confederate  cruisers  duly 
commissioned,  with  privateers  sailing  under  letter  of  marque, 
and  these  with  piracy,  was  pressed  until  the  following  October. 
Then  at  last  those  captured  on  one  of  the  Confederate  commerce- 
destroyers  were  brought  to  trial,  and  a  member  of  the  crew  of 
the  Jef  Davis  was  convicted  and  sentenced  to  death.^  Of 
course  the  sentence  was  not  executed;  and  the  farce,  prolonged, 
as  such  since  July  21,  then  came  to  a  close;  and  with  it  one  of 
Seward's  most  involved  diplomatic  schemes. 

The  United  States  simply  had  to  back  down;  or,  as  Seward 
the  day  following  the  battle  wrote  to  his  wife,  —  ''nothing  re- 
mains but  to  reorganize  and  begin  again."  ^ 

The  European  negotiations  had,  however,  already  languished 
to  a  conclusion,  all  the  diplomatic  formalities  being  'duly  ob- 
served. Before  the  tidings  of  the  catastrophe  of  July  21  reached 
Europe,  the  negotiation  had  come  to  a  head.  A  formal  conven- 
tion was  concluded  (July  18)  for  the  adhesion  of  the  United 
States  to  the  Declaration  of  Paris,  and  awaited  signature;  but 
on  July  31st  Earl  Russell,  just  as  the  news  of  what  had  occurred 

^  Russell,  Diary,  377.  "  '  Seward  at  Washington,  n.  6cx). 

^  Rhodes,  ni.  429;  Nicolay  and  Hay,  v.  10. ' 


43 


at  Bull  Run  was  about  to  reach  London,  took  occasion  to  notify 
Mr.  Adams  that,  if  the  proposed  convention  should  be  signed, 
the  engagement  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain  would  be  "pro- 
spective," and  would  "not  invalidate  anything  already  done." 
In  transmitting  the  correspondence  to  Secretary  Seward,  Mr. 
Adams  somewhat  naively  observed  that  he  did  not  understand 
the  meaning  of  this  phrase.   In  other  words,  it  would  appear  that  '^ 
the  ingenious  confusion  of  terms  —  belligerency,  sovereignty,  [ 
insurgency,  Confederate  cruisers,  letters  of  marque,  privateer-  1 
ing,  pirates  and  piracy,  the  last  five  being  in  the  plan  of  Mr.  J 
Seward  interchangeable  —  the  significance,  I  say,  of  this  con- 
fusion of  terms  had  not  occurred  to  the  American  negotiator. 
It  was,  however,  very  present  in  the  minds  of  both  the  British 
Foreign  Secretary  and  the  American  Secretary  of  State.    But  at 
just  this  juncture,  and  while  Mr.  Adams  was  meditating  the 
problem,  tidings  reached  him  of  what  had  occurred  in  front  of 
Washington  on  the  21st  of  the  previous  month.    This  was  on 
August  4th;  and  the  American  negotiator  had  good  occasion 
to  write  in  his  diary,  "Thus  a  change  is  made  in  all  our  ex 
pectations,  and  the  war  from  this  time  assumes  a  new  char- 
acter.   My  own  emotion  is  not  to  be  described." 

Applying  to  Secretary  Seward  for  further  instructions,  Mr. 
Adams  was  presently  advised  that  the  word  "prospective"  in 
Earl  Russell's  enigmatic  statement  was  considered  "unim- 
portant"; but  the  declaration  that  the  signature  of  the  con- 
vention should  "not  invalidate  anything  already  done"  was 
suggestive  of  difficulties.  Would  Earl  Russell  kindly  specify? 
This  despatch  did  not  reach  Mr.  Adams  until  after  August  28  th, 
—  twenty-four  days  after  the  news  of  Bull  Run  had  got  to 
London,  establishing  the  fact  of  Confederate  belligerencv  be- 
yond peradventure.  Mr.  Adams  had  then  as  the  result  of 
further  correspondence  already  received  a  despatch  from  Earl 
Russell,  prepared  evidently  in  the  full  light  of  the  recent  military 
occurrence  which  had  worked  a  change  so  material  in  all  the 
American  minister's  "expectations."  This  despatch  was  con- 
clusive. So  far  as  "specification"  was  concerned,  it  certainly 
left  nothing  to  inference.    Earl  Russell  now  wrote: 

It  was  most  desirable  in  framing  a  new  agreement  not  to  give  rise 
to  a  fresh  dispute. 

But  the  different  attitude  of  Great  Britain  and  of  the  United 


^ 


r 


K 


44 

States  in  regard  to  the  internal  dissensions  now  unhappily  prevail- 
ing in  the  United  States  gave  warning  that  such  a  dispute  might 
arise  out  of  the  proposed  convention. 

Her  Majesty's  Government,  upon  receiving  intelligence  that  the 
President  had  declared  by  proclamation  his  intention  to  blockade 
the  ports  of  nine  of  the  States  of  the  Union,  and  that  Mr.  Davis, 
speaking  in  the  name  of  those  nine  States,  had  declared  his  intention 
to  issue  letters  of  marque  and  reprisals,  and  having  also  received 
certain  information  of  the  design  of  both  sides  to  arm,  had  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  civil  war  existed  in  America,  and  Her  Majesty 
had  thereupon  proclaimed  her  neutrahty  in  the  approaching  contest. 

The  Government  of  the  United  States,  on  the  other  hand,  spoke 
only  of  unlawful  combinations,  and  designated  those  concerned  in 
them  as  rebels  and  pirates.  It  would  follow  logically  and  consistently, 
from  the  attitude  taken  by  Her  Majesty's  Government,  that  the 
so-called  Confederate  States,  being  acknowledged  as  a  belligerent, 
might,  by  the  law  of  nations,  arm  privateers,  and  that  their  priva- 
teers must  be  regarded  as  the  armed  vessels  of  a  beUigerent. 

With  equal  logic  and  consistency  it  would  follow,  from  the  posi- 
tion taken  by  the  United  States,  that  the  privateers  of  the  Southern 
States  might  be  decreed  to  be  pirates,  and  it  might  be  further  argued 
by  the  Government  of  the  United  States  that  a  European  power 
signing  a  convention  with  the  United  States,  declaring  that  priva- 
teering "was  and  remains  aboHshed,  would  be  bound  to  treat  the  pri- 
vateers of  the  so-called  Confederate  States  as  pirates. 

Hence,  instead  of  an  agreement,  charges  of  bad  faith  and  violation 
of  a  convention  might  be  brought  in  the  United  States  against  the 
power  signing  such  a  convention,  and  treating  the  privateers  of  the 
so-called  Confederate  States  as  those  of  a  belligerent  power. 

•'  Not  unnaturally,  in  view  of  the  facts  which  have  here  been 
recounted,  and  the  inferences  almost  necessarily  to  be  drawn 
from  them,  Secretary  Seward  in  due  time  (September  7th)  pro- 
nounced the  proposed  reservation  quite  "inadmissible."  And 
here  the  curtain  finally  fell  on  this  somewhat  prolonged  and 
not  altogether  creditable  diplomatic  farce.^ 

What,  however,  now  seems  more  particularly  to  deserve 
attention  in  a  study  of  this  episode  is  the  extreme  danger  appar- 

^  [In  his  annual  message  to  Congress  in  December,  1861,  President  Lincoln  said: 
"Although  we  have  failed  to  induce  some  of  the  commercial  powers  to  adopt  a 
desirable  melioration  of  the  rigor  of  maritime  war,  we  have  removed  all  obstruc- 
tions from  the  way  of  this  humane  reform  except  such  as  are  merely  of  temporary 
and  accidental  occurrence."    Ed.] 


45 

ently  incurred  therein  by  the  United  States.  Indeed,  without 
its  being  reahzed  by  any  one,  the  country  then  seems  to  have 
practically  challenged  a  greater  peril  than  ever  confronted  it, 
with  a  single  exception,  through  the  succeeding  years.  All,  in 
fact,  depended  upon  the  good  faith  of  Earl  Russell  in  pursuance 
of  his  pohcy  of  neutrality.  Earl  Russell,  by  great  good  luck, 
chanced  to  be  a  conventional  British  statesman;  but  had  he 
been  a  man  more  of  the  Bismarckian  type,  and  seen  the  situa- 
tion clearly,  the  result  would,  if  Mr.  Henry  Adams's  view  of  the 
situation  is  correct,  have  been  inevitable.  He,  in  his  paper,  as- 
sumes, a^nd  undertakes  to  show,  that  Earl  Russell  throughout 
this  episode  acted  evasively,  practically  in  bad  faith,  and  with 
an  ulterior  and  concealed  end  always  in  view.  That  end  was 
the  early  recognition  of  the  Confederacy,  and  a  consequent 
division  of  the  United  States.  From  the  outset,  as  Mr.  Henry 
Adams  asserts.  Earl  Russell  wanted  to  put  the  American  Min- 
ister in  the  position  of  representing  a  portion  only  of  a  divided 
country,  and  there  hold  him. 

But  if  this  assumption  is  correct,  the  whole  game  was,  in  the 
negotiation  which  has  been  described,  thrown  by  Secretary 
Seward  into  Earl  Russell's  hands.  All  the  latter  had  to  do  was 
at  once  to  accede  to  the  proposal  of  the  United  States,  and 
admit  it  by  convention  to  the  Articles  of  the  Declaration  of 
Paris.  He  would  then  have  left  the  Secretary  of  State  to  get 
the  assent  of  the  Senate  to  that  convention;  which,  however, 
Lord  Lyons  had  already  advised  would,  under  the  circum- 
stances, be  very  difficult  to  obtain.  This,  however,  a  Bis- 
marckian diplomat,  if  Mr.  Henry  Adams's  theory  as  to  the 
attitude  of  Russell  and  the  British  ministry  is  correct,  would 
not  have  regarded.  It  would,  in  fact,  in  no  way  have  concerned 
him.  He  would  simply  have  acknowledged  the  right  to  accede, 
and  claimed  that,  so  far  as  the  United  States  was  concerned, 
*' Privateering  was  and  would  remain  aboHshed  "  thereby. 

The  next  inevitable  step  would  have  followed,  and  that 
soon.  Seward,  as  Secretary  of  State,  would  have  insisted 
that  the  United  States  spoke  for  the  Confederacy,  and,  the 
Confederacy  not  being  a  belligerent  recognized  by  the  United 
States,  the  letters  of  marque  issued  by  it  constituted  a  license 
for  piracy  under  the  American  law;  and  the  American  law  on 
that  point  must  be  held  to  prevail.    The  cruisers  of  the  unrec- 


46 

ognized  de  facto  government  had  consequently  no  status  on  the 
ocean.  They  were  not  even  privateers  within  the  purview  of 
the  Declaration  of  Paris.  They  were  simply  pseudo-commis- 
sioned corsairs.  A  year  later  he  angrily  referred  to  them  as 
"  piratical  cruisers,"  the  presence  of  which  on  the  ocean  seemed 
"to  leave  to  the  United  States  at  most  no  hope  of  remaining  at 
peace  with  Great  Britain  without  sacrifices  for  which  no  peace 
could  ever  compensate."  ^  And  again  seventeen  months  later, 
under  date  of  December  8,  1862,  he  said  that  up  to  a  time 
shortly  before,  there  was  "  a  prevailing  consciousness  on  our 
part  that  we  were  not  yet  fully  prepared  for  a  foreign  war. 
This  latter  conviction  is  passing  away.  It  is  now  apparent  to 
observing  and  considerate  men  that  no  European  state  is  as 
really  capable  to  do  us  harm  as  we  are  capable  to  defend  our- 
selves. .  .  .  The  whole  case  may  be  summed  up  in  this :  The 
United  States  claim,  and  they  must  continually  claim,  that 
in  this  war  they  are  a  whole  sovereign  nation,  and  entitled 
to  the  same  respect  as  such  that  they  accord  to  Great 
Britain.  Great  Britain  does  not  treat  them  as  such  a  sov- 
ereign, and  hence  all  the  evils  that  disturb  their  intercourse 
and  endanger  their  friendship."  ^ 

Assuming  this  attitude  a  year  earlier,  —  and  it  apparently 
was  Seward's  next  projected  move  on  the  diplomatic  chess- 
board, as  the  pieces  stood  thereon  after  the  firing  on  Sumter 
and  before  the  Bull  Run  catastrophe,  —  the  plain  opportunity 
would  then  have  presented  itself  to  the  Bismarckian  states- 
man having  the  program  in  view  which  Mr.  Henry  Adams 
attributes  to  Earl  Russell.  The  reply  would  have  been  an  im- 
mediate and  emphatic,  "Very  well;  all  that  being  so,  we  will 
now  recognize  the  Confederacy  as  a  member  of  the  family  of 
nations.  After  that,  there  can  be  no  question  whatever  as  to 
public  commerce-destroyers,  privateers  or  pirates.  Every 
vessel  sailing  under  its  flag  will  be  as  much  a  public  ship  of 
war  as  one  sailing  under  the  flag  of  the  United  States.  But, 
so  far  as  the  United  States  is  concerned, '  Privateering  is,  and 
remains,  abolished!'" 

^  Geneva  Award  Record,  Correspondence  concerning  Claims  against  Great 
Britain,  October  20,  1862,  i.  260. 

2  Geneva  Award  Record,  Correspondence  concerning  Claims  against  Great 
Britain,  October  20,  1862,  i.  261. 


47 

Seward  would,  by  his  course,  have  thus  brought  about  the 
very  result  the  United  States  had  greatest  cause  to  apprehend 
and  most  desired  to  avoid.  In  other  words,  he  would  have  fallen 
headlong  into  the  somewhat  obviously  yawning  pit  he  had  elab- 
orately designed  for  others. 

How  perilously  near  the  country  came  to  the  verge  of  that 
pit  is  made  apparent  in  Mr,  Bancroft's  account  of  what  was 
known  as  the  Consul  Bunch  incident,^  which  occurred  contem- 
poraneously. Into  the  details  of  this  incident  it  is  not  neces- 
sary here  to  enter.  It  is  sufi&cient  to  say  that  while  the  nego- 
tiation for  the  adhesion  of  the  United  States  to  the  Declaration 
of  Paris  was  in  progress  in  Europe,  Robert  Bunch,  British  Con- 
sul at  Charleston,  was  carrying  on  something  bearing  a  strong 
resemblance  to  a  diplomatic  intrigue  looking  to  a  partial  adhe- 
sion at  least  of  the  Confederate  Goverrmient  to  the  same  Dec- 
laration. The  fact  came  to  the  knowledge  of  Secretary  Seward, 
and  the  papers  and  despatches  of  Consul  Bunch  were  at  the 
proper  timic  intercepted.  Subsequently  they  were  forwarded, 
through  Mr.  Adams,  to  the  British  Foreign  Office.  From  these 
papers  it  appeared  that  Mr.  William  Henry  Trescot  of  South 
Carolina,  who  had  previously  been  in  the  diplomatic  service  of 
the  United  States,  was  now  serving  as  an  intermediary  between 
Consul  Bunch,  acting  on  an  intimation  from  Lord  Lyons,  and 
Jefferson  Davis,  looking  to  an  understanding  to  be  effected 
with  the  Confederacy. 

A  new  and  extremely  interesting  dramatis  persona  here  enters 
on  the  scene;  the  strong  individuality  of  Mr.  Davis  must  now 
be  taken  into  account.    Mr.  Trescot  met  Davis  at  Gordonsville, 
Virginia,  while  the  latter,  naturally  elated  over  the  victory  just 
won,  was  on  his  way  back  to  Richmond  fresh  from  the  Bull 
Run  battle-field.    Mr.  Bancroft  then  says  that  a  certain  dis- 
satisfaction at  the  way  in  which  the  negotiation  now  proposed 
to  him  had  been  opened  seemed  to  cloud  Davis's' perception  of 
the  possible  advantage  to  be  derived  from  it.    Instead,  there^   ^Ji 
fore,  of  at  once  acceding  to  the  suggestion,  and  thereby  estab-  y 
lishing  quasi  relations  with  the  governments  of  England  and  J 
France,  Davis  merely  gave  to  the  proposition  a  general  approval, 
promising  to  refer  the  question  to  the  Confederate  Congress. 
This  he  subsequently  did;  and  the  Congress,  in  August,  1861, 

^  Seward,  n.  195-203. 


,>& 


48 

passed  a  series  of  resolutions,  drafted,  it  is  said,  by  Davis  him- 
self,^ approving  all  the  Articles  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris  ex- 
cept that  referring  to  privateers.  The  right  of  privateering  was, 
however,  especially  emphasized,  and  reserved.^ 

This  seems  to  be  a  somewhat  inadequate  disposal  of  what  was 
in  reahty  a  crucial  matter.^  It  would  really  almost  seem  as  if  a 
special  Providence  was  then  safeguarding  the  American  Union 
equally  against  the  blunders  of  its  friends  and  the  machina- 
tions of  its  enemies.  The  fact  is  that  Jefferson  Davis  was  at 
just  this  juncture  obsessed  with  three  accepted  convictions, 
each  one  of  which  in  the  close  proved  erroneous;  but  the  three 
together  dictated  his  policy.  These  convictions  were:  (i)  that 
the  decisive  miHtary  success  just  won  at  Manassas  was  final 
as  respects  the  establishment  of  the  Confederacy  as  an  indepen- 
dent nationality;  (2)  that  the  control  of  cotton  as  a  commercial 
staple  put  it  in  the  power  of  the  Confederacy  to  dictate  a  for- 
eign poHcy  to  the  European  powers;  and  (3)  that  the  free  is- 
suance of  letters  of  marque  to  privateers  was  a  terribly  destruc- 
tive weapon  of  warfare  in  the  hands  of  the  insurgent  States. 
On  these  factors  in  the  situation  he  now  impHcitly  relied;  and 
time  was  yet  to  show  him  that,  combined,  they  were  but  a 
broken  reed.  Davis  was,  however,  an  essentially  self-centred 
and,  in  his  way,  an  opinionated  man.  Implicitly  believing  he 
now  saw  his  way  clearly,  he  acted  accordingly;  and  what, 
differently  handled,  might  have  proved  a  great  opportunity 
for  the  Confederacy,  wholly  escaped,  unseen  and  neglected,  j ; 

1  Nicolay  and  Hay,  iv.  279. 

2  [Journal  of  the  Congress  of  the  Confederate  States  of  America,  I.  341.  These 
resolutions  were  substituted,  and  apparently  somewhat  hastily,  for  others  which 
had  recently  been  adopted  by  the  Congress.  The  Journal  shows  that  on  July  30 
Mr.  Hunter  of  Virginia  introduced  a  preamble  and  resolutions  defining  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Confederate  States  on  points  of  maritime  law,  as  laid  down  by  the 
Congress  of  Paris  of  1856,  which  were  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Foreign 
Affairs.  On  August  2  Mr.  Rhett  reported  them  back  to  the  House,  with  a  recom- 
mendation that  they  pass.  Six  days  after,  on  motion  of  Mr.  Barnwell,  the  special 
order  was  postponed  to  consider  those  resolutions,  and  the  House  passed  them. 
On  the  Qth  Mr.  Memminger,  by  imanimous  consent,  moved  to  reconsider  the  vote, 
and  the  resolutions  were  laid  on  the  table.  August  13  Hunter  submitted  a  new 
set  of  resolutions  as  a  substitute  for  those  on  the  table,  and  the  House  acted  at 
once.    The  earlier  resolutions  were  not  printed  in  the  Journal.    Ed.] 

3  See  also  Nicolay  and  Hay,  iv.  278-280,  where  the  whole  Declaration  of  Paris 
negotiation,  including  the  Bunch  incident,  receives  in  my  judgment  a  treatment 
both  inadequate  and  mistaken.  When  that  work  was  prepared,  the  facts  of  the 
situation  had  been  but  imperfectly  disclosed. 


49 

For,  in  the  full  light  of  subsequent  developments  and  disclos- 
ures, it  is  not  difficult  to  see  how  a  somewhat  less  self-confident 
and  provincial  President  of  the  Confederacy,  and  a  somewhat 
more  astute  and  clear-sighted  British  Secretary  of  Foreign 
Affairs,  would,  under  conditions  then  existing,  have  availed 
themselves  of  this  opportumty  to  bring  about  the  result  which 
Mr,  Henry  Adams  asserts  Earl  Russell  from  the  beginning 
had  in  view.  But  for  the  good  faith  of  Earl  Russell  in  following 
out  his  poHcy  of  strict  neutrality,  and  the  apparent  over- 
confidence  indulged  in  by  Davis  in  consequence  of  the  recent 
Confederate  success  at  Bull  Run,^  the  way  lay  open  to  a  direct 
and  full  recognition  of  the  Confederacy.  The  inchoate  nego- 
tiation initiated  by  Consul  Bunch  was  by  him  regarded  as  the 
first  step  in  that  direction;  and,  as  Mr.  Trescot  pointed  out 
to  Davis,  if  Mr.  Seward's  loudly  proclaimed  threat  was  carried 
out,  that  such  recognition  would  be  regarded  by  the  United  /'' 

States  as  a  casus  belli,  Great  Britain  and  France  must,  as  a  fn,    q}' 

succeeding  and  final  step,  be  brought  into  the  struggle  as  alHes  C^  --j^' 
of  the  Confederacy.  As  a  result  thereof  the  world  might,  as 
Mr.  Seward  confidently  anticipated,  "be  wrapped  in  fire";i 
but  the  blockade  would  surely  be  raised!  Jefferson  Davis  was 
yet  to  learn  that,  with  the  blockade  in  force,  no  port  for  prizes 
was  open,  and  privateering  was,  consequently,  fro  hac  vice,  an 
antiquated  and  useless  weapon  in  the  armory  of  warfare.  If 
then  it  were  abandoned  by  the  Confederacy  as  the  price  of 
such  an  alliance  as  that  now  suggested,  the  Confederate  Brit- 
ish-constructed cruiser  would,  with  its  prizes,  have  free  ingress 
to  and  egress  from  the  ports  not  only  of  the  Confederacy  but 
of  Great  Britain  and  France.  However  this  might  or  might  not 
have  proved  the  case,  one  thing  is  apparent:  If  the  motive 
and  policy  of  the  Palmerston-Russell  Government  was  in  the 
Summer  of  1861  what  Mr.  Henry  Adams  so  confidently  asserts, 
no  better  opportunity  of  reaching  the  end  it  had  in  view  ever 
presented  itself  than  was  presented  in  the  course  of  the  pro- 
ceedings which  have  just  been  described. 

*  "There  grew  up  [after  the  Battle  of  Bull  Run]  all  over  the  South  such  a 
perfect  confidence  in  its  strength  and  its  perfect  ability  to  work  its  own  salvation 
that  very  Uttle  care  was  felt  for  the  action  of  Europe.  In  fact,  the  people  were 
just  now  quite  willing  to  wait  for  recognition  of  their  independence  by  European 
powers,  until  it  was  already  achieved."  De  Leon,  Four  Years  in  Rebel  Capitals, 
130. 


so 

Fortunately  for  the  United  States,  the  policy  at  this  juncture 
pursued  by  Earl  Russell  was  far  more  straightforward,  above- 
board  and  direct  than  at  the  time  he  had  credit  for,  especially 
in  America,  or  than  the  American  Minister  in  London  then,  or 
Mr.  Henry  Adams  since,  has  credited  to  him.^  In  other  words, 
so  far  as  the  record  shows,  Earl  Russell,  at  that  time  at  least, 
meant  what  he  said,  and  carried  himself  accordingly.  Mr.  Henry 
Adams,  on  the  contrary,  writing  so  lately  as  1907,  has  expressed 
his  conviction  that  Earl  Russell's  management  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Paris  negotiation  "strengthened  the  belief  that  [he]  had 
started  in  May,  1861,  with  the  assumption  that  the  Confederacy 
was  estabhshed  .  .  .  and  he  was  waiting  only  for  the  proper 
moment  to  interpose."  This,  Mr.  Henry  Adams  further  asserts, 
seemed  at  the  time  so  self-evident  that  no  one  then  in  the  Ameri- 
can London  Legation  would  have  doubted  the  proposition  "ex- 
cept that  Lord  Russell  obstinately  denied  the  whole  charge, 
and  persisted  in  assuring  Minister  Adams  of  his  honest  and 
impartial  neutrality."^  If  this  was  indeed  the  case,  it  can  in  the 
full  light  of  subsequent  revelations  only  now  be  concluded  that 
the  British  Foreign  Secretary  was  either  truthful  in  his  assev- 
erations, or  that  in  August,  1861,  he  failed  to  avail  himself  of 
a  most  admirable  opportunity  to  carry  out  his  fixed  pohcy,  and 
most  effectually  to  "interpose." 

Meanwhile,  the  confusion  of  speech  intentionally  created  for 
an  ulterior  purpose  by  Seward  in  May  and  June,  1861,  has 
continued  indefinitely.  Take  our  associate  Mr.  Schouler,  for 
instance.    In  his  History  he  says:   "the  Palmerston  ministry 

1  Mr.  Adams,  apparently  as  the  result  of  later  experience  and  calmer  reflec- 
tion, saw  occasion  to  revise  his  opinion  of  Earl  Russell's  motives  and  ofl&cial 
action.  In  his  opinion,  as  one  of  the  Geneva  Board  of  Arbitration,  on  the  case 
of  the  Florida,  he  expressed  himself  as  foUows:  "...  I  hope  I  may  not  be  ex- 
ceeding my  just  limits  if  I  seize  this  occasion  to  do  a  simple  act  of  justice  to 
that  eminent  statesman.  Much  as  I  may  see  cause  to  differ  with  him  in  his 
limited  construction  of  his  own  duty,  or  in  the  views  which  appear  in  these 
papers  to  have  been  taken  by  him  of  the  policy  proper  to  be  pursued  by  Her 
Majesty's  government,  I  am  far  from  drawing  any  inferences  from  them  to  the 
effect  that  he  was  actuated  in  any  way  by  motives  of  ill-will  to  the  United 
States,  or,  indeed,  by  unworthy  motives  of  any  kind.  If  I  were  permitted  to 
judge  from  a  calm  comparison  of  the  relative  weight  of  his  various  opinions 
with  his  action  in  different  contingencies,  I  should  be  led  rather  to  infer  a  bal- 
ance of  good-will  than  of  hostiUty  to  the  United  States."  Papers  relating  to  the 
Treaty  of  Washington,  iv.  162. 

^  Education  of  Henry  Adams,  12S. 


51 

connived  presently  at  an  evasion  by  which  such  vessels  ceased 
strictly  to  be  'privateers'  by  receiving  commissions  from  Jef- 
ferson Davis  as  regular  war-vessels  of  the  Confederacy."  ^ 
And  yet  the  distinction  here  referred  to  was  manifest,  funda- 
mental and  universally  recognized. ^  The  Sumter  and  the  Ala- 
bama, for  instance,  were  constantly  referred  to  in  the  papers 
and  memoirs  of  the  time,  sometimes  as  "privateers"  and  at 
other  times  as  "pirates."  The  Sumter,  as  already  pointed 
out,  was  a  commissioned  Confederate  cruiser,  haiHng  from  a 
Confederate  port,  and  making  its  way  to  sea  through  a  block- 
ading squadron.^  On  the  other  hand,  the  single  weak  point  in 
the  Alabamans  position  was  that,  built  and  equipped  at  pubhc 
Confederate  cost,  it  had  no  home  port  of  record,  —  that  is, 
built  in  England  and  equipped  in  a  neutral  harbor  of  refuge, 
though  sailing  under  Confederate  colors  it  had  never  entered  a 
Confederate  port.  It  was,  however,  duly  commissioned  by  a 
de  facto  government,  and  a  belligerent  recognized  as  such  on 
land  even  by  the  United  States.  Except  in  that  single  respect 
of  a  home  port,  it  was  a  regularly  commissioned  ship-of-war, 
—  Just  as  much  so  as  the  Kearsarge.  That  a  ship-of-war,  the 
property  of  a  de  facto  government  engaged  in  active  war,  was 
built  evasively  of  law  in  a  private  ship-yard  of  a  neutral  coun- 
try, and  throughout  its  entire  Hfe  never  entered  a  harbor  of  the 
belligerent  in  whose  service  she  sailed,  certainly  constituted  an 
anomaly.  A  naval  anomaly  is,  however,  not  necessarily  piracy; 
nor  is  it  at  once  apparent  how  a  clause  to  that  effect  could,  to 
meet  a  novel  case,  be  read  into  the  accepted  treatises  on  inter- 
national usage.  British  in  origin,  equipment  and  crews,  the 
Confederate  cruisers  were  homeless  wanderers  of  the  sea  en- 
gaged in  an  irregular,  not  to  say  discreditable  work  of  destruc- 
tion —  a  work  very  similar  inj  character  to  the  wanton  destruc- 
tion of  property  by  fire  during  a  military  raid.    They  were, 

*  History  of  the  United  States,  vi.  126.    Also  Seward  at  Washington,  n.  625. 

2  Moore,  Digest,  vn.  543-SS8. 

'  The  case  of  the  Sumter  subsequently  led  to  a  long  diplomatic  correspondence 
on  the  point  referred  to  in  the  text.  In  his  Digest  (sec.  1315)  Moore  says:  "  Special 
attention  may  be  directed  to  the  note  of  Baron  Van  Zuylen  of  September  17, 
1 86 1,  as  a  singularly  forcible  and  able  discussion  of  the  question  of  asylum." 
"Mr.  Seward,  writing  to  Mr,  Pike  [our  Minister  to  the  Netherlands]  on  the 
17th  of  October  [1861],  declared  that  the  Sumter  'was,  by  the  laws  and  express 
declaration  of  the  United  States,  a  pirate,'  and  protested  against  her  receiving 
the  treatment  of  a  man-of-war."    Moore,  Digest,  vn.  986. 


52 

however,  still  cruisers  —  ships  of  war  —  publicly  owned  and 
duly  commissioned.  In  no  respect  privateers,  they  would  not 
under  any  recognized  interpretation  of  language  have  come 
within  the  Declaration  of  Paris  inhibition  of  privateering. 
Neither,  while  engaged  in  a  somewhat  piratical  work,  were  they 
in  any  common  acceptance  of  the  term  pirates.  Sailing  under  a 
recognized  flag,  they  confined  their  ravages  strictly  to  the  com- 
merce of  an  avowed  belligerent.  They  were  not  common  ene- 
mies of  mankind.  Semmes  and  his  sailors  were,  in  a  word, 
pirates  under  the  mum'cipal  law  of  the  United  States  only  in 
the  same  way  and  to  the  same  extent  that  Gen.  J.  H.  Morgan 
and  his  troopers  when  raiding  in  Ohio  and  Indiana,  immedi- 
ately after  Gettysburg,  were,  under  the  same  law,  bandits.^ 

It  is,  it  is  true,  well  established,  and  was  then  notorious,  that 
when  the  Civil  War  began  the  Confederate  authorities  dehb- 
erately  proposed  to  make  Great  Britain  the  basis  of  systematic 
naval  operations  directed  against  the  United  States.  This  was 
distinctly  contrary  to  the  principles  of  international  comity, 
if  not  law;  and  yet,  incredible  as  it  now  seems,  the  English 
courts  in  the  case  of  the  Alexandra  maintained  that  practically, 
and  subject  to  certain  almost  formal  legal  observances,  it  was 
a  legitimate  branch  of  British  industry!  Such  an  attitude  on 
the  part  of  an  English  tribunal  seems  now  incredible.  Yet  it 
was  then  gravely  assumed,^  and  constituted  for  us  a  sound  basis 
for  our  subsequent  demand  for  indemnity.  No  neutral  nation, 
of  course,  has  a  right  under  any  circumstances  to  permit  itself 
to  be  made  a  naval  base  for  operations  against  a  country  with 
which  it  is  at  peace;  but  its  so  doing  does  not  transform  an 
otherwise  recognized  weapon  of  warfare  into  a  crime  against 
the  human  race. 

I  Thus,  according  to  my  present  understanding  of  what  then 
occurred,  no  ground  appears  for  criticism  of  either  Earl  Russell 
or  Mr.  Adams  in  connection  with  the  abortive  negotiation  of 
i86i.'^Earl  Russell,  adhering  strictly  to  his  policy  of  neutrahty 

^  Rhodes,  v.  313-316. 

*  "From  the  ruling  of  the  judge  it  appeared  that  the  Confederate  Govern- 
ment might  with  ease  obtain  as  many  vessels  in  this  country  as  they  pleased  with- 
out in  any  manner  violating  our  laws.  It  may  be  a  great  hardship  to  the  Federals 
that  their  opponents  should  be  enabled  to  create  a  navy  in  foreign  ports,  but, 
like  many  other  hardships  entailed  on  belligerents,  it  must  be  submitted  to." 
London  Morning  Post,  August  10,  1863. 


53 

in  the  American  conflict  then  in  progress,  was  compelled  to  have 
recourse  at  times  to  what  in  the  eyes  of  Mr.  Adams  seemed  to 
be  disingenuous  evasions;  but  this  was  in  order  to  avoid  pro- 
posed commitments  of  the  character  and  purport  of  which  the 
Foreign  Secretary  had  been  advised  by  Lord  Lyons.  The  record 
reveals  nothing  to  justify  a  suspicion  of  Earl  Russell's  ulterior 
purposes  entertained  by  Mr.  Adams  at  the  time,  or  which  con- 
firms the  inferences  and  conclusions  of  Mr.  Henry  Adams 
since.  As  to  Mr.  Adams,  he  seems  to  have  proceeded  throughout 
with  a  direct  straightforwardness  and  manifest  good  faith  which 
at  the  time  impressed  Earl  Russell  with  a  feehng  of  confidence 
productive  thereafter  of  most  beneficial  results.  Fully  believ- 
ing in  the  soundness  of  the  policy  proposed,^  and  paying  no 
attention  to  the  freely  expressed  doubts,  fears,  and  otherwise- 
minded  conclusions  of  his  colleagues  and  compatriots  in  Europe 
at  that  juncture,  somewhat  obtrusively  thrust  upon  him,^  Mr. 

*  The  American  Case,  Geneva  Arbitration,  i.  77. 

*  [A  striking  example  of  this  distinctly  impertinent  intrusiveness  at  that 
period  of  the  poaching  diplomat  on  the  preserves  more  especially  assigned  to  the 
supervision  of  Mr.  Adams  (see  Adams,  Studies,  Military  and  Diplomatic,  363- 
367)  was  in  this  connection  afforded  by  Geii.  James  Watson  Webb,  appointed' 
Minister  to  Brazil.  On  his  way  to  his  post,  by  way  of  London,  General  Webb 
had  an  interview  with  the  British  Foreign  Secretary,  Of  what  passed  in  this 
interview,  he  at  the  time  gave  the  following  account  in  a  letter  to  President  Lin- 
coln, dated  Southampton,  August  22,  1861: 

"Yesterday  I  spent  at  Pembrooke  Lodge,  with  Lord  John  Russell  and  ...  we 
talked  for  two  hours  steadily  on  American  affairs.  ...  I  am  opposed  in  toto 
to  the  proposition  of  oxir  Government  to  agree  to  a  surrender  of  our  right  to  issue 
letters  of  marque,  and  send  forth  privateers  in  time  of  war;  because  the  time  of 
making  it  exhibited  weakness;  because  it  cannot  have  the  slightest  influence 
upon  the  pending  questions,  and  because  the  Senate  should  and  would  reject 
such  a  treaty,  if  made;  and  because  I  honestly  and  sincerely  believe,  that  such  a 
treaty  would  be  political  ruin  to  both  you  and  Mr.  Seward;  and  with  my  friend- 
ship for  both  of  you,  and  a  knowledge  of  the  People  gained  in  thirty-four  years 
of  editorial  life,  it  would  be  weak  and  criminal  in  me,  if  I  did  not  frankly  say  to 
both  of  you  what  I  think;  and  then  let  the  matter  rest. 

"Therefore  I  write  this  unofficial  letter  to  you  instead  of  Seward;  with  a 
request,  however,  that  after  reading  it  you  will  submit  it  to  him  for  perusal.  By 
that  time  I  shall  be  on  my  way  to  the  far  South  [Brazil];  and  if  either  of  you  do 
not  like  my  letter,  commit  it  to  the  flames.  And,  in  fact,  if  the  subject  be  not  of 
interest,  I  shall  not  complain  if  you  burn  it  without  reading. 

"I  told  Lord  John,  that  when  Earl  Ellesmere  and  other  English  statesmen  at 
Hatchford,  just  before  I  went  to  Paris,  said  we  had  refused  to  unite  in  putting 
down  privateering,  I  insisted  that  we  never  had  refused  our  sanction  to  the  prop- 
osition; but  on  the  contrary,  cheerfully  accepted  of  it,  conditioned  that  the 
European  Powers  would  make  it  more  philanthropic  by  rendering  all  private 
property  afloat  on  the  ocean  sacred  from  assault  in  time  of  war  as  well  as  in  peace. 


54 

Adams  carried  out  his  instructions  with  unquestioning  good 
faith.     There  is,  however,  now  reason  to  surmise  that  he  did 

Lord  John  replied,  'You  were  right;  it  was  we  who  refused  to  put  down  privateer- 
ing if  by  so  doing  all  private  property  became  sacred  in  time  of  war.  England, 
you  know,  could  not  consent  to  that.'  'Certainly  not;  and  I  justify  you  as  an 
English  statesman,  in  consulting  the  interests  of  England  by  refusing  your  assent 
to  our  rider  on  your  bill.  Of  what  use  would  be  your  enormous  navy,  if  in  time 
of  war  you  may  not  employ  it  against  the  commerce  of  the  enemy?  But  what  it 
is  wise  and  commendable  for  you  to  do  for  the  benefit  of  English  interests,  it  is 
equally  wise  in  us  to  do  in  self-defence.  You  refuse  to  respect  private  property 
belonging  to  your  enemy  in  time  of  war,  because  it  is  not  your  interest  so  to  do; 
and  we  refuse  to  put  down  privateering  unless  you  go  a  step  further,  not  because 
we  have  any  especial  love  for  privateering,  but  because  it  is  necessary  for  our 
defence  against  your  enormous  navy,  which  you  are  compelled  to  keep  up,  and 
which  France  forces  you  to  augment.  Your  Lordship  knows  that  it  is  contrary 
to  the  genius  of  our  people  and  the  public  sentiment,  to  keep  up  a  large  standing 
army,  or  a  great  naval  force  in  time  of  peace;  and,  therefore,  as  I  explained  to 
Lord  Ellesmere  and  his  friends  at  Hatchford,  and  to  Napoleon  at  Fontainebleau, 
we  resort  to  volunteers  in  time  of  war.  You  do  not  object  to  our  volunteers  on 
land,  why  do  you  so  to  our  marine  volunteers,  known  as  "privateers"?  When 
we  call  land  volunteers  into  service,  we  make  them  subject  to  our  rules  and  articles 
of  war;  and  when  we  call  out  our  naval  volunteers,  we  in  like  manner  render 
them  subordinate  to  the  rules  and  regulations  for  the  government  of  the  navy. 
There  is  no  difference  between  the  two  arms,  except  that  the  naval  volimteers  — 
the  privateers  —  are  the  most  national  of  the  two.  The  officers  of  the  land  or 
army  volunteers  serve  under  commissions  granted  by  the  State  authority;  while 
in  all  cases,  the  officers  commanding  a  privateer  (our  naval  volunteers)  are  com- 
missioned by  the  general  government.  They  are,  in  fact,  as  much  and  more  a 
part  of  the  navy,  as  the  volunteer  force  is  a  part  of  the  army;  and  they  render 
unnecessary  a  large  navy  in  time  of  peace.  War  always,  more  or  less,  interferes 
with  or  altogether  suspends  commerce;  and  in  time  of  war  we  invite  our  com- 
mercial marine  to  volunteer  for  naval  service,  under  commissions  granted  by  the 
Government,  and  subject  to  naval  regulations,  by  holding  out  as  an  inducement 
the  possession  of  all  the  prizes  they  capture.  This,  in  the  event  of  a  war  with 
England  and  the  employment  of  our  immense  commercial  marine,  would  soon 
put  us  in  a  position  to  do  as  much  injury  to  your  commerce  as  you,  with  your 
immense  navy,  could  inflict  upon  ours.  But  let  us  give  up  the  right  to  employ 
privateers,  or  in  other  words,  our  right  to  accept  of  volunteers  in  our  naval  ser- 
vice, and  the  English  merchant,  instead  of  finding  it  his  interest  to  be  at  peace 
with  us,  would  have  offered  him  a  bounty  to  urge  the  Government  to  war;  be- 
cause, with  your  superior  naval  force,  you  would  soon  drive  us  from  the  ocean 
and  monopolize  the  commerce  of  the  world.'  Lord  John  laughed  very  heartily 
at  all  this  and  said,  'but  we  never  asked  you  to  dispense  with  privateering.  The 
Paris  conference  made  the  suggestion,  and  it  was  not  for  us  to  refuse  a  good 
thing;  besides,  we  conceded  what  you  had  so  long  demanded,  that  free  ships 
should  make  free  goods.  But  did  you  say  all  this  to  the  Emperor?'  'Aye,  and 
more.  I  expressed  my  astonishment  that  he  should  have  given  his  assent  to  a 
proposition  so  palpably  designed  to  increase  the  naval  supremacy  of  England, 
that  it  was  clearly  of  English  origin,  no  matter  who  brought  it  forward.'  'And 
yet,'  said  Lord  John,  'he  did  assent  to  it,  and  is  in  favor  of  it.'  'That  by  no 
means  follows.  He  had  the  sagacity  to  perceive  that  our  people  never  would 
assent,  and,  therefore,  it  was  wise  and  diplomatic  in  him  not  to  oppose  England 


55 

not  fully  divine  the  purpose  of  his  chief,  being  happily  on  that 
point  less  fully  and  correctly  advised  than  Earl  Russell,  then 
Her  Majesty's  Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs. 

As  to  Secretary  Seward,  the  policy  he  at  this  juncture  ad- 
vocated, both  directly  and  indirectly,  as  well  as  his  utterances 
in  pursuance  thereof,  are  more  difficult  to  explain.  As  is  ap- 
parent from  what  has  already  been  said,  they  invite  analysis; 
and,  when  analyzed,  they  are  provocative  of  criticism.  In  con- 
sidering that  attitude  and  those  utterances  nearly  twenty 
years  ago,  Mr.  Rhodes,  in  an  extract  already  quoted,  referred 
to  them  as  indicative  of  an  "infatuation  hard  to  understand." 
To  like  effect  Mr.  Adams,  in  the  entry  in  his  Diary  already 
quoted,  wrote  on  receipt  of  Despatch  No.  lo,  of  May  21:  "I 
scarcely  know  how  to  understand  Mr.  Seward."  Since  then  the 
Welles  Diary  has  been  published,  affording  what  is  to  a  large 
extent  an  inside  view  of  the  Lincoln  Cabinet  movements.  So 
far,  however,  as  Seward  is  concerned,  the  enigma  remains  in 

in  her  project.  I  do  not  say  that  such  is  his  view  of  the  subject;  but  we  both 
know  that  it  would  have  been  wise  and  diplomatic  for  him  so  to  have  acted;  and 
in  so  much  as  he  is  both  wise  and  diplomatic,  his  having  given  his  assent  to  the 
proposition  by  no  means  proves  him  to  be  in  favor  of  it.  My  own  opinion  is  that 
he  would  hold  us  in  contempt  and  never  forgive  us,  if  we  were  to  prove  untrue 
to  ourselves  and  give  England  this  great  advantage  over  France  as  well  as  our- 
selves.' Lord  John  then  went  on  to  say,  that  altogether  too  much  importance 
has  been  given  to  the  subject,  'but  as  your  present  Government  desire  it,  we  will 
make  the  treaty,  even  if,  as  you  say,  it  is  certain  to  be  rejected.'  I  said,  I  hoped 
not,  because  its  rejection  would  only  lead  to  other  complications  and  discussions. 
He  replied,  'Not  a  bit  of  it.  I  am  perfectly  willing  the  treaty  should  be  rejected, 
because  I  have  long  been  of  opinion  that  no  treaty  stipulations  would  be  of  any 
avail.  War  once  commenced,  you  would  only  have  to  call  your  privateers  "the 
volunteer  navy,"  or  some  other  equally  appropriate  term,  instead  of  "privateers," 
change  somewhat  the  regulations  with  the  name,  and  according  to  your  own  argu- 
ment they  would  become  part  of  your  navy  for  the  time  being,  and  be  respected 
accordingly,  by  all  other  Powers.  So  we  will  give  your  administration  the  treaty 
they  ask  for,  and  they  must  then  settle  the  matter  with  your  Senate.  They  may 
accept  or  reject  it  at  their  pleasure,  for  it  would  amount  to  nothing;  but  I  rather 
like  the  manner  in  which  you  put  to  the  Emperor  the  advantage  conceded  to  us 
by  the  Paris  conference.'" 

Webb  sent  a  copy  of  this  letter  to  Mr.  Dayton,  who  replied,  August  26: 

"I  have  read  with  great  care  and  interest  your  letter  to  the  Prest.  a  copy  of 
which  you  enclosed.  As  it  is  imofiicial,  of  course  you  could  rightfully  send  it  to 
head-quarters  direct,  and  I  am  glad  you  did  so. 

"  That  negotiations  as  to  Privateering  is  likely  to  break  of  after  all.  Lord  John 
and  Mr.  Thouvenel  want  to  add  an  outside  declaration  at  the  time  of  the  execu- 
tion of  the  Treaty  which  I  will  not  agree  to  —  nor  will  Mr.  Adams.  This  is  of 
covirse  altogether  confidential,  but  my  impression  is,  that  with  your  letters  to 
Seward  &c.  it  will  for  the  present  end  the  matter."    Ed,] 


S6 

largest  degree  unsolved.  It  has  been  suggested  that  at  this 
juncture  the  Secretary  of  State  was,  like  every  one  else,  "grop- 
ing his  way";  or,  again,  that  he,  individually,  had  "lost  his 
head."  Amid  the  sudden  uncertainties  and  grave  perplexities 
which  surrounded  him,  in  common  with  all  others,  neither  sup- 
position is  to  be  dismissed  as  beyond  reasonable  consideration; 
but  that  he  should  then  seriously  and  persistently  have  advo- 
cated a  general  foreign  war,  or  that  he  should  have  exerted  him- 
self to  the  utmost  through  indirections  to  involve  the  country  in 
such  a  war  without  any  understanding  reached  in  advance  with 
his  chief  and  his  colleagues,  seems  incredible.  Yet  the  record 
apparently  establishes  such  as  having  been  the  case.  He  seems, 
in  fact,  to  have  been  wrong-headed  rather  than  to  have 
"lost  his  head";  and  to  have  persisted  in  a  path  at  once 
devious  and  erroneous  rather  than  to  have  been  "groping  his 
way." 

DeaHng  with  the  distinct  period  of  the  Civil  War  between  the 
attack  on  Fort  Sumter  and  the  defeat  at  Bull  Run,  it  is  in  jus- 
tice to  every  one  concerned  necessary  constantly  to  recall  the 
fact  that  it  was  throughout  formative. .  It  was  formative  as  re- 
spects foreign  relations  quite  as  much  as  in  its  domestic  bear- 
ings. It  is  in  evidence  and  indisputable  that  when  the  Fort 
Sumter  crisis  was  imminent  the  Secretary  of  State  urged  on  the 
President  the  expediency  of  forcing  immediately  a  foreign 
complication.  There  is  also  ground  to  beHeve,  although  on 
this  head  the  evidence  is  not  absolutely  conclusive,  that  so  in- 
tent was  Seward  on  at  any  rate  postponing  a  civil-war  outbreak, 
in  the  hope  that  a  foreign  complication  could  yet  be  substituted 
therefor,  that  when  the  Fort  Sumter  expedition  was  in  course  of 
preparation  he  caused  secret  advices  thereof  to  be  conveyed  to 
the  Confederate  authorities,  apparently  with  a  view  of  having 
the  expedition  fail  without  bringing  on  an  irrevocable  crisis, 
or  at  any  rate  having  the  government  at  Washington  appear 
as  the  provoker  of  strife  by  striking  the  first  blow.^  This,  by 
any  and  every  device,  he  sought  to  postpone.  He  did  not  suc- 
ceed; and  the  catastrophe  occurred.  Nevertheless,  he  seems 
even  then  not  to  have  thrown  off  his  delusion  as  to  the  possible 

^  On  this  point,  see  Bancroft,  Seward,  n.  145;  letter  of  Montgomery  Blair 
of  May  13,  1873,  in  Welles,  Lincoln  and  Seward,  58,  66;  Welles,  Diary,  i.  9,  32; 
II.  160,  248.    . 


57 

reconciliatory  effect  of  a  foreign  complication;  and  it  continued 
with  him  until  after  the  catastrophe  at  Bull  Run.  Indulging  in 
a  belief  that  Confederate  resistance  would  prove  a  delusion,  and 
would  collapse  under  the  first  blow  from  Washington,  he  pre- 
pared the  Despatch  No.  lo  of  May  21.  It  is  not  generally 
understood  that  in  the  original  draft  of  this  highly  aggressive 
communication  Mr.  Adams  was  instructed  to  confine  himself 
"simply  to  a  dehvery  of  a  copy  of  this  paper  to  the  Secretary  of 
State  [Russell],  and  then  to  break  off  all  official  intercourse 
with  the  British  Government."  Further  instructions  were 
then  given  him  as  to  what  poHcy  should  be  pursued  "when  in- 
tercourse shall  have  been  arrested  from  this  cause."  ^  As  orig- 
inally drawn,  the  despatch  amounted  practically  to  a  declara- 
tion of  war;  as  such,  it  will  be  remembered,  it  was  modified  in 
essential  respects  by  the  President  only  in  face  of  strong  oppo- 
sition on  the  part  of  the  Secretary.^ 

Even  while  penning  this  despatch,  Seward  moreover  put  on 
record  an  utter  misapprehension  of  his  own  position,  writing  to 
his  wife:  "A  country  so  largely  relying  on  my  poor  efforts  to 
save  it  had  refused  me  the  full  measure  of  its  confidence,  need- 
ful to  that  end.  I  am  a  chief  reduced  to  a  subordinate  position, 
and  surrounded  by  a  guard,  to  see  that  I  do  not  do  too  much 
for  my  country."  Mr.  Bancroft,  therefore,  in  his  Life,^  does  not 
apparently  go  too  far  when  he  says  that  at  this  time  Seward 
was  the  "victim  of  an  incomprehensible  illusion,"  adding: 
"The  only  theory  on  which  this  illusion  can  be  explained,  even 
from  his  point  of  view,  is  that  by  giving  full  play  to  his  imagina- 
tion he  was  strengthened  in  the  belief  that  the  Union  could  not 
be  restored  unless  the  'chief  could  get  free  from  his  'subordinate 
position'  and  push  aside  the  'guard'  that  was  preventing  him 
from  doing  too  much  for  his  country,  and  that  all  could  be  ac- 
complished by  means  of  a  foreign  war,  which  would  put  him  in 
control,  because  it  would  grow  out  of  questions  within  the 
province  of  his  duties." 

Whatever  his  poHcy  may  have  been,  therefore,  it  would  seem 
that  the  Secretary  of  State  was  practically  thwarted  in  his 
efforts  to  carry  it  out,  and  reduced  into  what  he  himself  consid- 
ered a  "subordinate  position."    In  view  of  what  has  already 

»  Nicolay  and  Hay,  iv.  271.  *  Russell,  My  Diary,  July  3,  1861.     . 

•  Seward,  11.  173. 


S8 

been  said  in  this  paper,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  that 
the  "guard"  referred  to  in  the  foregoing  extract  from  Mr.  Ban- 
croft's Life  was  Senator  Sumner,  then  alluded  to  by  Mr.  Seward 
as  a  supernumerary  Secretary  of  State  in  Washington,  accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Welles  "far  too  frequently  consulted  on  controverted 
or  disputed  international  questions."  ^  The  evidence  on  this 
head  is  not,  however,  confined  to  Mr.  Welles.  In  a  passage  from 
his  Diary  already  quoted,  it  will  be  remembered  that  Russell  at- 
tributes this  thwarting  of  action  on  the  part  of  Seward  largely  to 
the  intervention  of  Senator  Sumner.  Mr.  Sumner  was  certainly 
in  Washington  at  the  time  the  Despatch  No.  lo  was  approved 
by  the  President  "with  its  teeth  drawn,"  and  he  went  back  to 
Boston  in  so  excited  a  frame  of  mind  that  Mr.  Dana,  whom  he 
shortly  afterwards  met,  wrote  to  Mr.  Adams  that  he  was  "so 
full  of  denunciations  of  Mr.  Seward  that  it  was  suggestive  of  a 
heated  state  of  brain."  Mr.  Dana  added:  "He  cannot  talk 
five  minutes  without  bringing  in  Mr.  Seward,  and  always  in 
bitter  terms  of  denunciation.  His  mission  is  to  expose  and  de- 
nounce Mr.  Seward;  and  into  that  mission  he  puts  all  his  usual 
intellectual  and  moral  energy."  According  to  Mr.  Sumner, 
Seward  was  systematically  "pursuing  a  course  of  correspond- 
ence, language,  and  manner  calculated  to  bring  England  and 
France  to  coldness,  if  not  to  open  rupture."  ^  Then  a  mys- 
tery, what  Mr.  Sumner  had  in  mind  has  now  been  disclosed. 
He  spoke  not  altogether  unadvisedly.^ 

In  that  portion  of  his  History  relating  to  this  period  Mr. 
Rhodes  says:  "A  fair  statement  of  Northern  sentiment  by  the 
4th  of  July  [1861]  is  that,  although  most  of  the  rebels  would  be 
pardoned  by  a  gracious  government,  Jefferson  Davis  and  the 
men  captured  on  board  of  vessels  bearing  his  letters  of  marque 
should  be  hanged."  ^  In  other  words,  during  the  period  under 
consideration  the  country  as  well  as  Mr.  Seward  had  for  the  time 

*  Welles,  Lincoln  and  Seward,  90,  161,  185. 

*  C.  F.  Adams  Mss.,  Boston,  June  4,  1861. 

'  "Mr.  Sumner,  as  the  Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations,  is 
supposed  to  be  viewed  with  some  jealousy  by  Mr.  Seward,  on  account  of  the  dis- 
position attributed  to  him  to  interfere  in  diplomatic  questions;  but  if  he  does  so, 
we  shall  have  no  reason  to  complain,  as  the  Senator  is  most  desirous  of  keeping 
the  peace  between  the  two  coimtries,  and  of  moUif)dng  any  little  acerbities  and 
irritations  which  may  at  present  exist  between  them."  Russell,  Diary,  July  $> 
1861. 

*  Vol.  in.  429. 


59 

being  abdicated  all  sanity  of  judgment.  Confident  of  an  early 
and  decisive  military  success,  both  the  Secretary  of  State  and 
the  community  at  large  were  disposing  in  advance  of  the  spoils 
and  captives.  The  Secretary  was,  also,  in  the  way  natural  to 
him,  arranging  a  diplomatic  program  in  which  scant,  if  any, 
consideration  was  to  be  shown  foreign  nations.  In  other  words, 
he  was  preparing  a  theatrical  appeal  to  that  spirit  of  American 
nationaUty  in  the  might  of  which  he  had  such  implicit,  if  some- 
what sentimental,  faith. 

Such  then,  so  far  as  the  evidence  warrants  conclusions,  was 
the  attitude  of  Mr.  Seward,  and  such  the  policy  he  strove  to 
impose.  That  policy  was,  it  would  also  appear,  based  on  several 
propositions  almost  equally  erroneous.  First,  he  quite  misap- 
prehended the  situation  as  respected  his  chieftaincy  in  the 
conduct  of  the  administration,  and  responsibility  therefor. 
Second,  he  labored  under  a  delusion  as  to  the  feeling  existing  in 
the  community  composing  the  Confederacy.  Third,  and  most 
dangerous  of  all,  was  his  deception  connected  with  the  ques- 
tion of  privateering  as  a  weapon  in  modern  warfare,  whether 
in  the  hands  of  the  Confederacy  as  against  the  Union,  or  in  the 
hands  of  the  national  government  as  against  foreign  nations, 
especially  this  last.  As  already  more  than  once  pointed  out, 
Seward  seems  to  have  really  believed  that  it  was  but  necessary 
for  the  United  States,  as  representative  of  democracy,  to  raise 
its  hand,  to  cause,  as  he  himself  was  wont  to  express  it,  "the 
world  to  be  wrapped  in  fire." 

That  it  should  have  been  possible  for  a  representative  New 
York  poHtician  to  indulge  in  good  faith  in  such  a  degree  of  in- 
fatuation hitherto  has  constituted,  and  will  probably  long  con- 
tinue to  constitute,  an  historical  enigma.  That  it  was  in  his 
case  a  passing  delusion  is  true;  as  also  that  in  its  more  publicly 
dangerous  form  it  did  not  survive  the  shock  of  July  21st. 
Meanwhile,  during  the  period  of  obsession,  so  to  speak,  the 
danger  of  privateering  and  the  use  of  privateering  seem  to  have 
been  always  present  to  the  Secretary's  mind.  It  was  privateer- 
ing, moreover,  of  the  type  of  fifty  years  before,  —  that  in  vogue 
in  his  youth,  during  the  War  of  18 12.  Accordingly,  in  his  de- 
spatch of  the  2ist  of  May,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Adams  that  "Hap- 
pily, Her  Britannic  Majesty's  Government  can  avoid  all  these 
difficulties.    It  invited  us  in  1856  to  accede  to  the  Declaration 


6o 

of  Paris,  of  which  body  Great  Britain  was  herself  a  member, 
aboHshing  privateering  everywhere  in  all  cases  and  forever." 
He  then  suggests  a  negotiation,  saying  that  Mr.  Adams  already 
had  authority  to  propose  the  accession  of  the  United  States  to 
the  Paris  Declaration,  and  inviting  him  to  negotiate  to  that 
end.^ 

The  trouble  with  Mr.  Seward's  subsequent  position  was 
simple,  —  it  was  impossible!  He  wished  to  do,  and  yet  not  to 
do.  He  wanted  to  commit  the  insurgents  as  included  in  the 
sovereignty  of  the  United  States,  but  not  to  commit  the  United 
States,  in  case  of  hostilities  with  European  powers  growing 
out  of  the  existing  complications.  He  could  not  bring  himself 
to  admit  that  a  blockade  conducted  under  the  rules  of  inter- 
national law  was  impossible  except  as  an  act  of  belligerency, 
and  that  belligerency  implied  two  parties  to  it.  This  necessary 
and  inevitable  proposition  both  of  logic  and  international 
usage  he  obstinately  refused  to  admit.  In  other  words,  so  far 
as  accession  to  the  Declaration  of  Paris  was  concerned,  Mr. 
Seward  during  the  period  in  question  seems  mentally  to  have 
exerted  himself  to  the  extent  of  self -persuasion  that  the  conflict 
in  which  the  country  was  engaged  was  a  war  so  far  as  the  United 
States  was  concerned,  and  a  war  or  not  a  war  so  far  as  the 
foreign  powers  were  concerned,  as  the  interest  of  the  United 
States  might  dictate.  Moreover,  he  confidently  maintained  it 
was  a  war  conducted  in  accordance  with  established  inter- 
national usage,  to  which  so  far  as  foreign  nations  were  affected 
there  was  but  a  single  party,  —  that  party  representing  abso- 
lute sovereignty,  while,  under  some  rule  vaguely  alluded  to  as 
in  existence,  the  insurrectionary  power  was  composed  not  of 
belligerents  but  solely  of  bandits  and  pirates  —  outlaws. 

That  he  might  possibly  have  succeeded  in  this  diplomatic 
tour  de  force,  had  the  United  States  forces  achieved  a  decisive 
and  brilliant  success  at  Bull  Run,  is  within  the  range  of  possi- 
bilities. In  view  of  what  actually  occurred,  this  possibility  is, 
however,  hardly  worthy  of  consideration.  It  is  sufficient  here 
to  say  that  the  policy  of  Mr.  Seward  during  the  three  months 
in  question,  so  far  as  the  actual  record  shows,  was  based  on 
misapprehension;  misapprehension  not  less  of  the  position  he 
himself  occupied  than  of  the  situation  as  it  existed  both  in  the 

^  Nicolay  and  Hay,  rv.  273. 


6i 

Confederacy  and  in  Europe.  Moreover,  his  contentions  were 
quite  devoid  of  any  foundation  in  the  accepted  principles  of 
international  law.  Somewhat  transparent,  the  carrying  of  his 
scheme  into  actual  operation  would  almost  necessarily  have 
resulted  in  a  practical  challenge  of  foreign  nations  at  once  to 
recognize  the  Confederacy  as  a  member  of  the  family  of 
nations.  It  is  difficult  indeed  to  see  how  it  could  well  have 
failed  so  to  do.  Ill-advised,  illogical,  and  contradictory,  the 
diplomatic  policy  pursued  during  this  brief  and  early  stage  of 
the  Civil  War  constitutes  almost  as  complete  an  enigma  now 
as  it  did  to  Mr.  Adams  then,  or  thirty  years  later  to  Mr. 
Rhodes.  In  many  aspects  it  is,  and  is  likely  to  remain,  im- 
possible of  satisfactory  explanation  for  the  simple  reason  that 
it  is  incomprehensible. 

Thus,  in  the  outcome  of  this  inquiry,  I  find  myself  back  at  the 
point  of  commencement.  As  a  diplomatic  episode,  the  abortive 
negotiation  over  the  accession  of  the  United  States  to  the 
articles  of  the  Declaration  of  Paris  bore  a  strong  family  re- 
semblance to  the  equally  abortive  though  far  more  disgrace- 
ful and  calamitous  military  performance  known  as  the  first 
Manassas  advance.  Both  were  ill-considered  incidents,  in  no 
respect  creditable,  characteristic  of  a  distinct  because  a  danger- 
ously emotional  period  in  the  history  of  the  American  people, 
—  that  is,  the  hundred  days  between  Fort  Sumter  and  Bull 
Run. 


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